Prologue

“Phobos, Fearful Son of Mars”

1.

LIGHT AND SHADOW could easily trick the eye. Every painter understood that and while Henry Barnsdale-Stevens was not an artist, the manipulation of form by sketching on a flat surface to create a three-dimensional image had always intrigued him. Just as other worlds intrigued him.

Alone at times with nothing more than a stick of charcoal, some reams of paper and his imagination, Henry had often tried to depict what he imagined the planets in the aether looked like from an age when others considered him far too young to travel any distance on Earth, let alone to the stars.

Now he stood on the dusty surface of the oft-disregarded Phobos, staring at something that not only inspired his creativity, but also left him with numerous questions making him feel many years younger than his seven and twenty.

“Is this what you envisioned, sir?”

The voice of Carstairs, his valet, crackled through the connection in the helmet of his atmosphere suit, a painful reminder of inferior quality. The expression on Carstairs’ face had been a reflection of Henry’s own inner doubts when donning the costume, but he’d come too far to back out. Fortunately, despite his dread of feeble gravity he’d not floated off into the dark-depths of space. Henry wasn’t at all sure he could have resisted the pull of his curiosity had he known such a thing would occur in certainty. Although God forgive him if misfortune befell and he left his darling Elizabeth effectively a widow at heart before they’d even wed.

The monolith was not as Henry’s professor back at Oxford believed an ill-formed “bit of rock” either indigenous, exposed by a passing meteor storm, or the foreign remains of said meteorite. Neither was the object as other learned gentlemen surmised triangular, almost pyramidal. It was not a boulder or a cliff. Not a building, nor a remnant or fall-out of the Stickney crater impact. Henry didn’t know what it was except mysterious and marvellous.

The standing stone’s shape was too uniformed to be natural and the markings on the surface undoubtedly some type of language, though one he could never hope to read. No matter, when the roughly hued depictions were enough to set his passions flowing, his mind expanding with new concepts and ideas of possibilities not present to his senses.

Drawings. There were words and drawings on this stone.

“Sir!” Carstairs’ cry broke into his imaginings. Quite honestly, the man was becoming a pain. The ooft preceding the hiss and clack before communication cut-off made him wish his servant hadn’t come, but the chap had insisted as much as his position allowed. Having attended Henry’s family enough years for there to be an “understanding” of such liberties between them, how did one refuse? Experience had taught Henry to deal with whatever ailed the other man first. Then he could concentrate his energy to gathering as much information as possible before his air ran out.

“Yes, Carstairs, what is?”

Pain stole his words and his ability to complete the turn. Knees buckling, Henry Barnsdale-Stevens was unable even to reflect on the fate of his companion. The sight of the Phobos monolith became once more all-consuming. Henry’s last thought was to wonder whether his helmet would prove strong enough to cope with even a slight collision against the monolith he’d always wanted to see since the first moment he had heard of its existence.