For the last two and a hallf years I've been working on a novel called Mars Looks Different.  I've mentioned it several times, starting in the January 2003 issue of my zine, but I have never felt that it was quite a the stage where I wanted to share any of it with you.  I think I finally want to let you in on one of the three things that have sucked up my writiing time for the last two and a half years.  This is the first chapter and a few excerpts from Mars Looks Different.  I'm approximately 80 percent done with the rough draft and hope to have it ready to market within a couple of months.  If you like what you read  here, feel free to let me know.  I could use a kick in the butt right now to ratchet up the priority on this.

“Dad, Mars looks different tonight.”

Ward Parke looked up from the eyepiece of his telescope and grinned at his daughter.“Different how, Bev?”

Bev Parke bent back down over the eyepiece of her telescope.“I don’t know. Just different. Should I be able to see either of the Martian moons with this thing?”

“With a four inch scope and wimpy optics? No. Not even on a good night with Mars about as close as it is going to get. Why do you think you’re seeing a moon?”

“Because it is going around Mars.”

Ward stood up and stretched. He stood all of five foot eight inches tall, but by some trick of perception managed to pack over two hundred pounds on that frame without looking either fat or overly muscular. He looked around. The clear September night made for spectacular viewing and twenty or more amateur astronomers were scattered around the field with their scopes on this Friday night.

Ward looked back at Dick Baird’s old white farmhouse. “I suppose we could go back to the basement and look at a star chart—see if there is supposed to be anything that would look like its close to Mars.”

Stanley—Stan to his friends--Baird stood up and walked over, his six-foot-six inch, bulky body looking even bigger in the starlight.

“What’s this about Mars?”

“Bev thinks she sees one of the Martian moons.”

“Uh, no.  Sorry dear.  The Martian moons are –“

“Five and ten miles in diameter,” Bev said.  “I know.  I shouldn’t be able to see either one.  That’s why I asked.”

Ward asked, “Know of anything that would look close to Mars?”

“Not off the top of my head.” Stan said.  He went over to his telescope and moved it around.  After a couple of minutes, he straightened up and said, “Now that’s interesting.”

“What?”

“Whatever she is seeing shows up as a disk on my scope.  Not a big one, but definitely a disk.”

Ward said, “And that means a moon or a planet.”

“Pretty much.”

Ward asked “Any features?”

“Can’t make anything out with this piece of junk,” Stan said.  He looked at Bev.  “When Imperial Atomics takes over the world and makes you dictator, promise me that you’ll build an observatory on the far side of the moon, okay?”

Bev said, “I can’t think of anybody less likely to take over the world than an amateur astronomy club.”

Stan looked at her in mock horror.  “Imperial Atomics isn’t just an astronomy club.  We cover pretty much all of the geek hobbies—computers, amateur radio, caving, model rockets, storm chasers, experimental aircraft people.  We used to have stamp collectors, role-playing gamers, Klingons, and chess players but we decided that they were too mainstream and kicked them out.”

Bev asked, “Isn’t calling someone’s hobby a ‘geek hobby’ mean?”

“Only if you’re not into the hobby.  I’m into all of those hobbies, so I’m allowed.”  Stan raised his voice.  “Emergency Imperial Atomics meeting in five minutes.  Need everybody there.”

Several people groaned, but the group filed in to the farmhouse basement.  “Remember to keep it down.  My uncle and his wife went to bed a couple of hours ago.  Zero impact means we get to keep using their basement on these weekends,” Stan said, ”Now, anyone with a star chart get it out.  We’re looking for anything near Mars that should be showing up as a disk on my telescope.”

Someone said, “That’s easy.  There isn’t anything.”

“Yeah, that’s my guess too, but I’d rather not be guessing.”

After a couple of minutes, Stan looked around the room.  “Nothing on the charts that I can see.  I think that the youngest member of Imperial Atomics may just have found herself something brand new—not a Martian moon, but maybe a major asteroid.  Let’s see if we can get an orbit on it and put Bev Parke’s name in some books.”

Ward pulled Stan aside as the rest of the group went out to their telescopes.  “If this turns out to be anything we may need to keep Bev’s name out of it for a while.”

“Why?”

“Rumor has it that Pat has found yet another psycho boyfriend and gone off the rehab bandwagon.”

Stan shook his head.  “So you figure that your ex-wife’s about ready to go on another rampage.  If Pat’s going to blow she’ll blow whether or not Bev’s name is in the paper.”

“Yeah, probably.  I just hope I can keep Bev from seeing any of the ugliness.”

“Well, I just hope she doesn’t shoot you in the back or talk the boyfriend into doing it for her.  All of your self-defense stuff won’t help a bit against that.”

Ward nodded.  “Custody officially goes to my sister if anything happens to me, but god knows what the courts would do.”

“Yeah.  Pat can be pretty convincing until you find out about the drugs and the psychotic episodes.”

“The perfect mother,” Ward said.  “And part of the reason she’s convincing is that she really believes it.”

“Well, another two or three years and you won’t have to worry about it as much.  Pat’s what?  Thirty-one?  With her lifestyle she isn’t going to keep the looks much longer.”

“So I’ll have to deal with middle-aged fat psycho boyfriends instead of young skinny ones.  At least the young ones figure that strength and speed is all that counts in a fight,” Ward said.

“If you want me to I can stay over a few nights,” Stan said.  “Even when she’s at her worst Pat doesn’t do much when I’m around.”

“Yeah, there’s something about being six foot six, and weighing what?  Not much under three hundred pounds.”

“I wish I still weighed under three hundred pounds.”

“That, plus the fact that you got a full ride college wrestling scholarship, makes you just a tad intimidating at first glance.” 

“And here I thought she just wanted my body.  Of course even my standards aren’t quite that low—no offence to you.” 

“None taken.  I was young.  She looked good.  I thought I was in love.” 

Stan shrugged.  “No offense, but for some reason you attract women that like to be with psychos.” 

  “Yeah, and they lose interest when they find out I’m really a pretty nice guy.  In Pat’s case by the time she figured that out Bev was on the way, and the rest is history.  Not all bad.  Bev’s the best thing in my life—keeps me from letting you guys get me in too much trouble.”

“Oh, I still manage to get you in quite a bit of trouble.  Speaking of which, are you going to stick around for the pyrotechnics in the quarry tomorrow?”

 “No.  I don’t share your love of blowing things up.  Besides which I would rather not be here when somebody rounds you guys up and carts you to the federal pen.”

“Shouldn’t happen.  I’ve got all of the proper permits and I’ve jumped through all of the proper safety hoops.”  Stan said.  “Remember the T-shirt?  ‘Socially responsible pyromaniac.’”

“Just not something I’m into.  Besides, I’ve got to open the bookstore at 11 tomorrow morning.”

“You own the thing.  You can set your own hours.”

“Yeah, but once I set them I have to stick with them.  Otherwise I lose customers.  Sorry, just can’t do it.  Let’s go out there and figure out exactly what Bev found.”

 

The following Monday morning, Thomas Baker, President of the United States shook his head.  “Why do we have to go through all of this spin nonsense?”

Presidential science advisor Roy Jeffreys shrugged.  “Well, we could always announce that Mars now has an extra moon, that Venus may have one, that Mars looks like it now has an ocean and that we’re picking up what appears to be radio signals from—oh let’s see—Mars, the moon, probably Venus, and several places in the asteroid belt.  We could tell them that someone or something appears to be zipping around the solar system in extremely powerful, fast spaceships.  I wonder how Wall Street would handle that.  I wonder how Joe Sixpack would handle that.”

“Why do we have to say anything?  Every country with a scientific bent has the same incentive to keep things quiet that we do, and from the calls I’ve gotten they want to.”

Roy shook his head.  “There are a minimum of ten thousand amateur astronomers in the United States alone with scopes good enough to see the changes, maybe five or ten times that many.  We’ve got to give them something.  We told them that Mars just captured a large, previously unknown asteroid.  That’s what they’ll focus on.  We even have some of the professional astronomer types asking for help plotting the orbit.  We’ve hinted that the captured asteroid may be in an unstable orbit.  That covers us if we suddenly find ourselves back in a sane solar system.”

“So how long will this story of yours hold up?”

“I don’t know.  We’re working on explanations for the other stuff people will eventually find, assuming we don’t just pop back into a solar system without extra moons and probable extraterrestrials.”

“I’m praying for that every night.  So did all of this extra junk pop into our solar system or did we pop into another solar system?”

Roy said, “As near as we can tell, we’re in a different solar system—everything past a point somewhere outside geosynchronous orbit is from a different system, including the moon.”

“A parallel universe version of our solar system if I understood the briefing,” President Baker said.  “You know, if this is some kind of elaborate April Fools joke your wonk friends dreamed up I’m going to string the lot of you up.”

“I wish it was.”

“I take it that we haven’t been able to translate any of the radio signals yet.”

“Not really.  We’re starting to sort out the function on some of them.  We think the high bandwidth stuff is some kind of two-way television—digital, probably very compressed.  We have people trying to adapt hardware to bring the signal down into normal television ranges and other people trying to reverse-engineer their compression algorithms.”

President Baker nodded.  “We’re tossing money at that as fast as we can.  Kind of ominous that we know they’re out there but we haven’t had any visitors yet that we know of.”

“Emphasis on the ‘that we know of’ part.  The three missing satellites--”

“Probably mean that they—whoever they are—are checking out our technology,” President Baker said.  “The problem with this cover story of yours is that in the long-term is may cost us credibility—not to mention the fact that it makes it impossible for me to ask Congress for the spending we really need right now.  You want me to build stuff to find out what’s going on in the solar system.  That takes money.  You want me to build fighters for near earth orbit.  That takes money.  You want me to look into building these ‘Orion’ things.  That takes money—not to mention being about as politically risky as anything I could do.  Can you imagine what the press would do to me if they found out I was spending money to build a spaceship that works by setting off nuclear bombs behind it?  You want me to build nuke-tipped missile interceptors?  That takes money, and people aren’t going to be real happy about the possibility of nukes going off over their heads.  I’m using every legal fiscal trick I can to retarget money, along with a few tricks that may not fly if anyone takes us to court on them.  That’ll work for a week or maybe even a month, but eventually we’ll have to go to Congress.”

“And they’ll ask why we’re assuming that whoever is out there is hostile,” Ron said.  “That’s something we don’t have a good answer for just yet.”

“As president I pretty much have to plan for the worst case scenario.  Part of the job.”

“Anything new on the high atmosphere heat energy bursts?”

President Baker shrugged.  “They’re still happening.  If something is coming in from out there we can’t reliably track it beyond the upper atmosphere.  We have theories and some people claiming they can figure out where whatever is coming in is going to.  We have people checking out all of the theories.  Nothing solid though.  Could somebody from fifty years ago track our most advanced stuff?”

“Fifty years.  Do you think they’re that far ahead of us?”

President Baker said, “I don’t know.  What do you think?”

“I’d say that they’re at least fifty years ahead.  Maybe several hundred or a thousand.  How long would it be before we could be zipping around the asteroid belt?  Even fifty years is way too long.  Think World War II technology versus what we have now.  If they’re hundreds of years ahead of us, think American Indians versus Europe.”

President Baker shook his head.  “No.  I don’t particularly want to think about either of those scenarios.”

<<<excerpt  two>>

President Baker slammed down the phone.  He got up and paced back and forth behind his desk.  “I’m the president of the United States.  We’re in potentially the biggest national emergency that we’ve ever been in as a nation.  I ask for time on telescopes that the federal government paid for, and I have to horse trade for little scraps of time.  Tell me why I shouldn’t declare martial law so we can at least use our assets to find out what going out there?”

Ron Jeffreys shrugged.  “Well, other than the fact that the economy would tank, and if Congress didn’t believe you declaring martial law might get you impeached I can’t really think of any reason not to do that.  I assume you’ve done an executive order giving national security interests priority on the big telescopes and the space telescope.”

“Yes, and as soon as the public comment period gets over that will help.”

Ron said, “Time on the big scopes is booked almost by the minute, and fought over politically in a subtle science politics way.  Access to that data can make or break a career.  You’re the six hundred pound gorilla in the mix, and you will get a seat at the table, but it’ll take a while for them to sort out who doesn’t get a seat at the table so that you do.  Hopefully you’re doing better at getting the military telescopes retargeted and getting spy satellites turned around.”

“A little better, though they’re telling me that the spy satellites have to be reprogrammed before they’ll be much use in looking out at the moon and Mars.  We put fairly good-sized telescopes in a couple of high-altitude jets and that’s helping,” President Baker said.  “We’re getting information.  It’s just frustrating when we have all of these assets and I can’t get at them.  China, Russia, France, and the Ukraine have all sent up satellites that look like they’re targeted at finding out what’s going on out there.  I can’t even use most of the stuff we already have out there, much less get anything new up there in less than a month.”

“Any luck on sharing intelligence with the other space powers?”

“Some.  So far it’s on a case-by-case basis.  More horse-trading.  At least we got the big boys to agree on no independent contact or negotiations, not that whoever is out there seems interested in talking to any of us anyway.”

“That’s important.  A united front might make a difference.”

“If it holds up,” President Baker said.  “This hasn’t stopped any of our old rivalries.  Whoever is out there could change the balance of power on earth in about two seconds.”

“I hear that we know a little bit more about who is out there.”

“Based on less than a second of video, they look human or close to it.  One of the spook agencies threw a lot of computer power at one of their signals and managed to decompress a little of it,” President Baker said.  “Then we have what looks like a lot of small-ship crashes on the moon, too many to be explained by accident.  That’s why we have to be able to see what’s going on out there.  If someone’s fighting out there, who is it?  Why are they fighting? How are they fighting?  What are their capabilities?”

“And is everybody out there human?”

“That’s a good point.  Whoever they are, they’re curious about us, and willing to kidnap our people.”

“What?  I hadn’t heard about this,” Ron Jeffreys said.

President Baker said, “The high altitude heat dumps appear to have been bait—a way of bringing in some of our technical people in so they could grab them.  A couple of amateur astronomer types seem to have sprung the trap.  We had two security people nearby and they seem to have grabbed one of them.”

“What were the amateur astronomer types doing out there?”

“I don’t know, but we’re probably lucky they were.  Instead of technical people they got one of our security people, some guy that runs a bookstore, and some guy named Stanley,” President Baker said. “The security guy has well-concealed communications gear—high bandwidth burst stuff and a low bandwidth backup transmitter.  Whoever did the grabbing may have gotten more than they bargained for if they don’t watch themselves.”

“And if they find it, that tells us something too.”

“Not enough though.  I’m trying to make absolutely vital decisions in a fog.  There is still too much unknown and information is coming in too slowly,” President Baker said.  “We’re in a race with whoever is out there.  Whichever side finds out more about the other first gains some major advantages.  Unfortunately, we’re also in competition with every other major power on earth, and every country that wants to be a major power for information about who is out there.  Find me ways of getting more information about what is going on out there.”

<<< excerpt three >>>

*******

At 9 am Thursday morning, President Baker said, “We can’t keep this thing blacked out much longer.  Too many people know things and too many other people know that something’s being hidden from them.”

Ron Jeffreys nodded.  “I know.  And too many rumors are going around.  I saw one on the net that said we’re building a dozen Orions.”

“We are.”

“What?  When did that happen?”

“Happened last night,” President Baker said.  “I’ll show you why in a minute.  We are totally outclassed technologically and facing someone totally ruthless and very warlike.  These aren’t your peaceful philosophers.  Watch this—and don’t ask how we got it.  They won’t even tell me.”

President Baker pressed a button and a black and white video came up on a monitor.  The video showed a battle taking place near the surface of the moon.  Ron tried to count the spacecraft maneuvering within his field of view and occasionally firing some sort of beam weapon.  The spacecraft moved too fast, but he was pretty sure there were several dozen—maybe as many as a hundred.

President Baker pointed to a slow-moving boxy shape near one edge of the screen.  “Watch this.  It’s a mine of some kind.”

Several spacecraft concentrated their fire on the boxy shape.  It kept coming and the spacecraft backed off, still firing.  The boxy object suddenly exploded, shooting out dozens of intense beams of some sort.  Spacecraft exploded as that beam hit them, and debris flew up from the surface of the moon.

“Secondary explosions on the surface of the moon,” President Baker said.  “Some kind of structure there seems to have been the objective of the battle.”

The video showed the remnants of that structure with a crater around it.  Ron said, ”Impressive.”

President Baker said, “You couldn’t see it on this tape, but the people on the surface had formidable defenses—beams and toward the end they ejected mines—smaller version of the one that hit them.  If all of the beams were as intense as the one that hit the surface the explosion had to be outside the upper range of the yield we’ve gotten from fusion bombs—at least two hundred megatons.  All of the ships we see here are small fry.  Based on size these are the smallest of six ship classes.  The big stuff tracked the battle but stayed out of it.”

“I wonder why the big stuff stayed out of it.  Sounds like a civil war of some kind, with parts of their forces trying to stay neutral.”

President Baker nodded.  “The structure they hit was inhabited.  Based on size there could have been a couple hundred thousand people there.  That’s the upper limit.  It might have been as little as one-fourth of that.”

“That’s still not good, “ Ron said.  “Sounds like they might have some kind of higher order fusion—something even more powerful than hydrogen to helium.  I suppose it might just be a more powerful hydrogen to helium bomb.  At a certain point we decided not to push for more powerful hydrogen bombs because our rockets were getting accurate enough that it didn’t make much military sense to increase the yield.”

“Whatever the structure was made of, it held up a lot better against the explosion than anything we have would have—an order of magnitude better,” President Baker said.

“So nothing short of a nuke would have taken it out.”

“No, and it’s why I ordered a major acceleration of military preps.  We’re working to equip some older fighter planes with nuclear-tipped missiles capable of going a couple hundred miles out into space, which will give us some defense capabilities.  I have three separate teams bending tin on Orion variations and three other teams trying to build a space-fighter out of off-the-shelf parts.”

“Wow.”

“We have multiple teams trying to build nuke-tipped rockets that can reach the moon when fired from an aircraft.  Hopefully that will give us at least some deterrent.  We’re looking to build huge amounts by pre-event standards.  The twelve Orions you mentioned are just the first wave.  We have to be able to build dozens of them a year once the designs are proven.”

Ron asked, ”How long will it be before this stuff comes online?”

“Too long.  At least two years for the Orions, and that only if we ignore God knows how many EPA and OSHA rules.  We’re scrambling to find good machine tools and people that know how to use them.”

Ron said,  “We would have had more options back during the Cold War.”

“Maybe, but we would have also had watch our backs a lot more.”

“You realize, of course that if we pop back into the normal solar system you’ll be lucky if you don’t get impeached,” Ron said.

“And I would deserve it.”

“You know that if you explode nukes up in the atmosphere you’ll knock out a lot of electronics down here, not to mention any fallout,” Ron said.

“So I’ve been told,” President Baker said.  “If they’re about to hit one of our major cities with one of those mines we need a counter.  Nuke-tipped rockets is the best we can do in a semi-usable time frame.”

“Has your kidnapped agent made contact?”

“No.”

“Any fallout from the bookstore guy and guy named Stanley going missing?”

President Baker said, “I don’t know.  I’ll make sure someone’s on it.”

“We’re a long way out of our league here,” Ron said.  “And you aren’t going to be able hide all of these programs from Congress for very long.”

“Yeah.  I just have to figure out a way of bringing in senior Senators and Congressmen without getting impeached and put into a loony bin.”