Such remarks, often heard, were made with varying tones of optimism or gloom.
Olympus was moving steadily nearer. Observation showed, alarmingly, that its rate of progression was ever increasing. Various attempts to communicate with it failed. Willa and Vera, the mentatropists, had driven to the site, where they picked up a CPS, followed by a scrambled signal. The signal was intensively studied, but years passed before it was understood.
It was in that fifth year of our exile that Meteor Watch reported an object approaching Mars at a considerable velocity. Everyone was alarmed. But the speed of the object decreased. Eventually, a capsule shot from it, extruded a helichute, and landed a few kilometres north of the domes. An expedition set out immediately to investigate it.
The capsule bore a large symbol, TUIS, painted on its side. When transported into the domes and opened up, it was found to contain various medical supplies, scientific equipment, and a veritable store of foodstuffs, many of the names of which we had all but forgotten.
The supplies were accompanied by a plaque that read, ‘With the Admiration of the Terrestrial Utopian International Society’. We wondered at the title, which indicated that the times were changing Downstairs.
Early in our sixth year, which is to say six terrestrial years on the calendar to which we clung, notching up days like Crusoe on his island, the outer rim of Chimborazo appeared over the horizon, to be clearly viewed from both domes and science unit. Its leading edge seemed now to be approaching at a rate that was hard to credit – at least 500 metres a day. It was easy to imagine its paddles beating furiously through the underlying regolith. However, the speed of movement did not represent the motion of Chimborazo as a whole. Chimborazo’s scope encompassed more and more of the Martian surface, tumbling in our direction -a terrifying wave of regolith ploughed up before its prow.
Willa-Vera announced they would soon decode the signals they had recorded: Chimborazo’s ‘voice’ fluctuated up and down the electromagnetic spectrum, and might be comprehended more as music than actual speech. They would have everything interpreted in a year or possibly two.
Their well-publicised conviction was that, after many centuries of meditation, this towering mentality – a mentality dwarfing Everest – had become a virtual god in wisdom. Once its mode of communication was understood, Chimborazo’s immaterialism and transcendent qualities would set humankind upon a fresher and more vital path than could at present be visualised.
We would then move forward into ‘an ultimate reality’.
I would certainly welcome a reality beyond my present day-to-day life…
It was six years and 100 Martian days since the economic collapse that had swept EUPACUS away, carrying the terrestrial infrastructure with it. A manned ship arrived within Mars matrix and went into orbit about the planet. The visitor appeared enormous, resembling, some said, St.
Paul’s Cathedral turned upside-down. We marvelled at it as if we were peasants.
Another age had dawned in the history of matrixflight. This strange object proved to be a ship powered by nuclear fusion. The epoch of wasteful chemical rockets was dead.
‘What – what kind of rocket is that, for God’s sake?’ exclaimed a young YEA.
It was John Homer Bateson who replied, and even he sounded impressed, ‘I would suggest that rockets are now as obsolete as the bathysphere.’
‘What in hell is a bathysphere?’ was the response.
A ferry floated down from this new marvel. Witnesses remarked that in the gentleness of its descent it was like a giant metal leaf. Our isolation was now ended…
Much jubilation broke out in the domes. Of a sudden, the prospect of green meadows, golden beaches and blue oceans became almost overwhelmingly desirable. We looked eagerly to see the faces of our rescuers from Downstairs.
Three unsmiling men confronted us. Marching into the domes, they announced that the Premier of the UK had taken over the assets of the failed EUPACUS consortium. They were the legal inheritors of all EUPACUS property. A EUPACUS ship had been stolen five years previously; its pilot, one Abel Feneloni, together with his accomplices on the ship, had been arrested. The ship was badly damaged when crash-landing in the north of Canada.