Species II Read Free Page A

Patrick’s determined voice spilled from the multiple speakers in the control panel at the same time they saw his image on the screen reach for the space-suit helmet. When it was in place and locked down, Patrick said one more thing over the solo feed to the mother ship to make sure the audio connection was working:
    “All right, Mars. Say hello to the human race.”
    P atrick Ross stepped off the landing module’s ladder and onto Martian soil at about ten minutes after eleven on what was a perfect Saturday morning back on his home planet. If he could have seen the celebrations across the United States, he would have been embarrassed at all the fuss; he wasn’t quite sure how he’d become an all-American hero, and the truth was, all this attention just made him flustered. He couldn’t show that, of course—he’d been raised to speak clearly and proudly in public and to do right by the image of his father, Senator Judson Ross. There was the memory of his mother to consider, too—if he didn’t always agree with his father, he was determined to do right by her. She had been sweet, patient, and taken from the family way too soon. Without getting too Freudian, Patrick saw some of the same character qualities in his lovely girlfriend, Melissa. She didn’t know it yet, but someday she’d be the wife of an American astronaut and the mother of his children.
    He felt the life-support system on his EVA suit register the swift drop in external temperature and adjust the body temperature-control unit to accommodate it. Numbers flashed across the small optical display just above eye level on the inside of his helmet, and one of those numbers told him it was slightly under one hundred and eighty degrees Kelvin on the Martian surface—a staggering one hundred thirty-five degrees below zero Fahrenheit. After all these years and all the moon and space walks he’d done, it still amazed Patrick that he, or any man or woman, could actually be walking around in an environment that brutal.
    He stopped and just stood there for a few moments, drinking in the sight of the Martian landscape in a close-up way that no one else in history had ever experienced: the terrain filled with dark, porous rocks; the rusty-red, sandy-textured soil; a sky painted the color of salmon from atmospheric dust. The view stretched across his vision and beyond for as far as he could see with a stark, unrelenting beauty that was almost mesmerizing.
    Patrick broke the spell himself, knowing that if he didn’t move forward soon, the radio would cut into the silence around him and ruin the moment. With graceless movement, he turned and punched in the code to unlock the exterior storage compartment; when the hatch dropped open, he lifted out a small folded package and the rack containing Anne’s trio of bright orange canisters. Five halting steps took him far enough away from the landing module to give the mother ship a view on the video screen that was unmarred by any man-made object but the one he painstakingly unfolded. He snapped open the metal rod at one end, then pushed it deep into the dry, blood-colored soil. Patrick knew that when he spoke, the transmission would fill his voice with static from atmospheric interference, so he said his words slowly and as clearly as he could, while the cold Martian wind straightened the folds of the American flag:
    “Not for one nation, one people, or one creed, but for all humankind.”
    Mankind had finally conquered Mars.
    Back Home on Earth
    M illions of people across the nation raised their voices in celebration, hoisting everything from beer bottles to coffee cups to cans of soda. Fixed before their television sets at home, in bars, in health clubs, and during reluctant Saturday work sessions at the office, they all listened, exhilarated by the success of the Mars mission and captivated by the voice of Peter Jennings.
In a world beset by violence, hunger and strife, there are still occasions when mankind surpasses