Olympus Mons

Hi All,

First bit of a story - like a daily comic strip.

Mars. A  planet of red iron rust and dust storms, huge mountain highlands and vast lowlands.  Despite the best efforts of humanity to terraform, the place seemed invulnerable to such attempts. Instead the  people who lived there had to do with living in vast bio domes, as they did on the moon.

Olympus Moms was the largest volcano on Mars and the largest yet mapped by humanity : it would cover  France or Texas and two and a half times as tall as Everest back on earth.  

Halfway up this goliath , freezing in what passes for the Martian summer was a peculiar figure. Tall and thin, elderly with a keen scholarly face.  Despite his surrounding , underneath his space suit , he wore an Edwardian frock coat, waistcoat , stiff collar, English public school tie and a university of Cambridge scarf. The only thing missing was a Tudor bonnet.  The year was 2090 , and Englishmen abroad were as ever expected to maintain certain standards.

The Englishman was Professor  Lord Henry Brayfield  and he was a dedicated historian and archaeologist , focusing especially on astro- archaeology.  Technically he was also  an alien , in so much as he was a host to an Oncarvan:  they'd encountered each other way back in 1908  , but that's another story. 

Nearby a gang of Martian labourers were swinging pick axes and Brayfield watched impatiently as they chipped away at the rocks . As soon as the space was big enough , he pushed them aside.  'Good show chaps, but that will do .  Percy (his long suffering post graduate assistant )  , tell the help to remain here . You come with me'.  Eagerly Brayfield climbed through the gap, Percy cautiously behind him.

They found themselves in a long stone walled tunnel, going down to the heart  whatever it was they'd found. But it was clearly proof that some ancient Martian civilisation has existed before human colonisation.

Brayfield pressed eagerly ahead, his flash light bobbing up and down .  The tunnel led into a huge echoing chamber.  Brayfield held up his light and looked around. The light seemed to flicker eerily off jewelled caskets and ornate golden objects.  ' Prefect Percy' , he breathed.  ' Great heavens what a find!  The first proof of a native Martian civilisation !'

' Professor , look at this '  gasped Percy.

It was a ten foot tall piece of  stone.  But it was what carved on it.

' That looks like Greek to me'  said Percy and this bit , lower drown, Hebrew or Aramaic ?'

' Goodness , I do not believe it , you're right old chap . Ancient Greek and Aramaic '

'  Then there's another language , I don't recognise '

' If we recognise two of those , so presumably these hieroglyphs are Martian. It's a Martian Rosetta stone'.

' But what do they say ? ' asked Percy.

' I will excuse your lack of familiarity with Aramaic, but Greek?  What they blazes do they teach at red bricks ?' Brayfield snorted.

'I'm fluent in various non human languages , but I didn't think I'd end up on Mars with a stone bloc that implied Greeks and whoever spoke Aramaic, Jews  wasn't it? had contact with some extra terrestrial Martian civilisation -'

'Bloody hell! '

'Sorry '

'Not you ,  this monstrosity '.

'I don't understand '

'Both the Greek and  the Aramaic,   and my dear boy Aramaic was a  native language of Jews , but  also of the  vast Persian empire , seem to be saying the same'

'Which is what ?'

' It's all Greek to me' 

Continue to chapter 2