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    Horsemen of Mars
    Horsemen of Mars
    Horsemen of Mars
    Ebook150 pages1 hour

    Horsemen of Mars

    By Codex Regius

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    The award-winning science novel

    The Horsemen of Mars come with the solar wind.

    The sparks beneath their invisible hoofs illuminate the nights of the red planet. A marvellous sight from the safety of your base on Mars.

    But when you are lost in the red planet's desert, the Horsemen of Mars show their fatal facet as their wild hunt is tracking down your fragile body.

    Join our Mars crew in the most critical time of their mission! Follow them into the struggle for their lives on the hostile plains and hills of the red planet.

    An illustrated science novel for young and adult armchair astronomers. Including two double-page maps and many real images from Mars' surface.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXinXii
    Release dateJul 11, 2016
    ISBN9783958309531
    Horsemen of Mars

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      Book preview

      Horsemen of Mars - Codex Regius

      Codex Regius

      Horsemen of Mars

      A science novel

      2nd, revised edition

      Wiesbaden Ljubljana 2014

      Published by: © 2014 Codex Regius

      All rights reserved.

      Author: Codex Regius

      Contact: andreas@romanike.de

      Cover sheet and layout: Codex Regius

      E-Book Distribution: XinXii

      http://www.xinxii.com

      This book, including its parts, is protected by copyright and may not be

      reproduced, resold or forwarded without approval of the author.

      Fig. 1. A telescopic view of Mars from Earth

      Science and science fiction have done a kind of dance over the last century, particularly with respect to Mars. The scientists make a finding. It inspires science fiction writers to write about it, and a host of young people read the science fiction and are excited, and inspired to become scientists to find out more about Mars, which they do, which then feeds again into another generation of science fiction and science; and that sequence has played a major role in our present ability to get to Mars.

      Carl Sagan

      Notes

      All illustrations, including those above, and their origins and significance for the story are described in the chapter Bilder (p. 93). A global map of Mars is attached at the end of the book.

      Any Russian names and phrases given in the text are written in compliance with the ISO/R 9 standard. Here, j generally has the sound of y and g is always a hard sound as in goal. Hence, the name Galja is pronounced ‘Galya’.

      Fig. 2 Topographic map of Mangala Valles

      Fig. 3 But what an evening star!

      Fig. 4 The corundum of the night and its pale lunar sister

      Fig. 5 Two shabby substitutes for the Moon

      Fig. 6 The moons of Mars raced across the starry sky

      Fig. 7 Dust was everything this world was ready to give

      Fig. 8 Was it Spirit or Opportunity?

      Fig. 9 Meteortrail above Tscheljabinsk, 2012

      Fig. 10 It released this little rover - Sojourner it was called

      Schiaparelli Base, sol 334,

      1820 hours Local Martian Time (LMT)

      When the tiny solar disk sank below the horizon, Leda went often under the observation dome and looked for the stars coming out. Now she had again stayed longer there than the doctors recommended. And the ticking of the radiation counter assumed a distinct touch of imperativity.

      Yet she dared to go on waiting for that approaching meteor shower. Though, when there was no appreciable mantle of air above your head, such a prediction amounted to an air defence warning. Any descending meteorite that would have harmlessly died away in the atmosphere of Earth fell into the worldwide desert of Mars like an air bomb. And there were many bombers in this wild section of the solar system. Too close did Jupiter come and its gravitational field forced entire squadrons of comets, planetoids and tinier bodies on erratic orbits to terrorise the lesser neighbouring planet.

      So far, however, only the stars which this planet seldom hid behind clouds sparkled treacherously down on the little base.

      The one thing that Leda most desperately missed about this sky was a lunar face. The Moon she loved so much had shrunken to a tiny dot that was always staying close to the Evening Star. But what an Evening Star was shining on the red wastelands of Mars! It was not white like Venus which was now further away and fainter and never quite receding from the sun. The herald of sunset over Mars was a blue sapphire: Earth, remote enough that even the latest news from there was already more than a quarter of an hour old when it reached their antenna at the speed of light.

      For a long time she had been waiting for the corundum of the night and its pale lunar sister to leave the hazes of morning, pass behind the sun and reappear in the evening sky. Now that this had come true at last and the too long draught of conjunction was nearing its end, when Earth had been drowned in the twilit daytime, it told her that the flight back was slowly drawing closer. The twin pair of Evening Stars would soon turn brighter and brighter as it came forth behind the Daystar and gradually closed up to slower Mars. Once it would farthest elongate, the ERV, the Earth Return Vehicle, would take off with her aboard and head for that point beyond the sun where Earth would meet them nine months later. And Leda would come home at last …

      Was it really this sapphire splinter on which she had lived once? Where she had laid in the grass and listened to the larks? Standing there in the dusk, she spread virtual wings to bear her across the void to that place that provided seas into whose foaming coolness she might immerse.

      Seven more months to come. Another seven months to stay and three quarters of a year for the return trip. Till then she would have to forget that there were words like sea or grass or lark because in the deserts of Mars they remained but random noise. The only thing that ever moved there was sand dancing in the whirls of the wind across the stones.

      Night was the time when Mars was most similar to Earth. Then she could imagine herself to be in the Sahara or in the Arizona desert beneath the vault of stars. Until she moved one step and was aware again that her body was weighing less than 25 kilogrammes under a mere third of Earth‘s gravity. All her body was able to feel that she was not at home.

      At least the starry sky was akin to the one she had left at home. In fact, this firmament did not revolve around the Lesser Bear and the two outer planets, Jupiter and Saturn, would soon turn brighter than Leda had ever seen them, since Mars was going to overtake them on its speedier orbit and approach them closer than Earth ever did. Still she had not travelled far enough, however, to see the constellations changed. Many light-years she would have had to cross for that. The distance from Earth to Mars – or even to the outermost planets – was much too small to perceive stars shifting positions. In that respect, she had hardly even passed through her own garden gate at all.

      But the skies of Mars were, after all, lacking that splendid moonlight. They were roamed by two potato rocks only that measured hardly 25 kilometres across: two shabby substitutes for the Moon which was

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