Read The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself (Apollo Quartet) for Free Online

then crawls backwards out onto the MM’s porch. He can’t bend his knees much in the A7LB, the Martian atmosphere is only 0.087 psi but it might as well be vacuum. He shuffles back until his boots hang over the ladder fixed to the forward landing gear strut. He’s practiced this move a dozen times back on Earth, on a full-mock-up of the MM and in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, but he’s glad it’s only 0.376 G here on Mars. Firmly gripping the railing to either side, he hops back onto the first rung of the ladder.
    Moments later, he’s on the bottom rung. He stops and looks down. It’s only thirty inches to the Martian soil, but this damned spacesuit is heavy and he’s already warm from the exertion. He pushes himself off backward, and time seems to slow as he falls towards the red sand. He’s looking down, the neckring of his helmet blocking his view of his feet, and he can see the ground drifting closer and closer and closer—
    He hits the dirt. There’s a billow of orange dust around his boots. Some of it settles on his legs, the rest blows away.
Mankind has just ventured from his home, and there’s a whole new world here for us to explore. Let’s treat it with respect.
Fine words, Discovery.
I had three months to think of them while we were flying here, Endeavour.
[laughter] I guess I remember that, Discovery.
    He moves forward from the MM, describing his surroundings for the folks back on Earth and wishing he had the vocabulary to truly capture the essence of this place. At first sight, Cydonia could be some place on the Colorado Plateau, Monument Valley perhaps, a high desert with mesas and off to his left hills sculpted by millions of years of dust storms set amid broken terrain. But it’s also dead, completely lifeless, as if some red poison had settled over the land and killed everything which grew. The ground beneath his feet is hard red rock with a light dusting of red sand. He stamps a foot and watches dust billow out. It travels only a short distance to either side, an inch or two, and then falls fast to the ground. A wisp of red catches a breeze and ghosts off to his left, twisting and writhing before dissipating to nothing.
    It’s hard work. His spacesuit is heavy, the journey here has weakened him, and he has to fight the A7LB’s pressurised bladder with every step. There’s not much give in his knees, but he can move his hips and ankles, and he’s forced to make small straight-legged skips to move forward, rocking from side to side with each step.
    About twenty feet from the MM, he stops. He tries to calm his breathing, he doesn’t want to trigger the voice-activated microphone. The Face is about three miles away, just over the horizon, but he can see its upper reaches and though he’s seeing it from the side and at lower level, it still doesn’t look natural. There’s weathering, he can see that now, the tip of the nose is broken and there are cracks on its sides. The ridges which form the lips are broken and a short length is missing completely. He wonders if he hasn’t fallen prey to pariedolia himself.
    Then he turns around and looks at the MM, crouched in the middle of this desert, its gold skirt smeared with red dust, streaks of orange across the silver planes of its face, and beyond it the D&M Pyramid. And, by God, it looks like a goddamn pyramid. The edges are blurred, the top has collapsed a little, but it looks no more natural than the pyramids of Egypt.
    Rested, he heads back to the MM. He jumps up onto the lowest rung of the ladder—it’s a struggle, no doubt it was easier on the Moon—and then hops up each rung until he can reach the insulation blanket covering the MRV. He rips it free, pulls off the operating tapes and, lanyard in hand, hops back down the ladder to the surface. Backing away from the MM, he gives the lanyard a yank, and then holds it taut as the Mars Roving Vehicle folds out from its bay, its rear wheels lowering into position and locking, then the