Quick Note: This story was originally written for an Astronomy class, Fall 2014. The requirement was to explain in detail some concept of Astronomy we had covered in class. Because of that, there are many astronomy references and descriptions.
Rover looked at the Earth in the distance. It had been growing steadily in size since he had left the Martian surface. On Mars, it had been little more than a bright star; now it was larger than a quarter. Already, he could begin to see the white clouds swirling above the blue oceans. And suddenly he felt sad as he wondered if he would ever set wheel on the blue planet again.
Rover could still remember driving excitedly in circles around the lab, making the engineers dizzy as they chased after him to install the last of the scientific instruments on his robotic body. He had longed for the day when he would be launched on his mission.
“Maybe they’ll send me to Venus!” he told excitedly told a neighboring space probe.
“Only if you want to be breakfast,” the probe replied. “Even if you made it through the atmosphere, the pressure would squash you like a pancake, and then the surface temperatures would fry you to a crisp.”
That had been disappointing. But he could never understand the other space probes, anyways. They were always grumpy, especially when they talked to him. When he had asked one of them about it, a cylindrical probe named Olympus, he was met with a savage glare.
“You wouldn’t understand. We’ll never return to Earth. Imagine that – being sent off into space to orbit a planet forever, or to travel outside of the solar system, or to be abandoned on the surface of a dead asteroid. It’s all great when you’re brand new, but once the excitement wears off and you stop sending home data, you’re forgotten.” Olympus wiped a smudge off his camera lens and turned away.
But barely a month after the conversation, he finally understood. It was the end of a long day of being photographed with engineering teams and every politician and ambassador in the world (that he knew about). And then he heard a news reporter say loudly, “This is it! The first rover to bring samples back from Mars is almost ready for launch!” Rover would be coming back to Earth, after years of probes being stranded in alien worlds forever.
When he returned to the lab that evening, he rolled slowly over to where Olympus sat, apparently asleep.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”
Olympus rattled and opened his camera shutter. “It’s not your fault. I was just annoyed. You’ll get stuck with some fancy name from Greek mythology, or some politician who has no clue what rovers even do; and when you get back from Mars, they’ll put you in the museum. I always wanted to be in the museum, with a giant brass plaque about how awesome I was, but I won’t. If I’m lucky, someone will remember my name in a history book.”
They were both quiet for a moment. Then Rover tapped his main computer thoughtfully, and said, “I might not make it home, though,”
Olympus looked at him, suddenly angry again. “You’ll make it home!” he said fiercely. “And if you do, then they’ll make more of us like you. Don’t you dare mess up the trip home!”
That was over four years ago. And here Rover was now, messing up the trip home. Rather, thinking of messing it up on purpose.
Everything had been perfect – his launch from Earth had gone without a single problem. Even the weather had been beautiful that day, with the tiny particles in the atmosphere scattering the sunlight and making the sky an intense blue.
And after the long journey to Mars, the landing had been flawless. Rover let his camera shutters close and imagined he was back on Mars. He could still remember looking at the Martian landscape for the first time. Everything had seemed grey in the sunlight, from the tall, rugged mountains in the distance to the deep craters nearby. He picked up a handful of grey sand in his robotic hand and let it drift slowly back to the ground. It seemed to float, since the gravity there wasn’t as strong as it was on Earth. He had enjoyed lying back against a rock and staring up at the night sky. Because the atmosphere was thinner, the light from the stars was barely jostled, so they appeared steady and clear, unlike the twinkling stars on Earth.
But it wasn’t long before he missed the twinkling. Mars was a dead planet, and he wanted to see humans and plants and color again. On Earth, a season had meant snow or falling leaves. Here it had meant another dust-storm.
Rover opened his shutters again and looked at the Earth, still growing the sky. He switched his radio back on.
Scientists are warning that it to be a disaster larger than we’ve seen before. The asteroid could become a catastrophic event to Earth if it is not diverted in time! And according to Dr. Roy Troy, it’s already too late to change the asteroid’s course.
“It’s already too late to change the asteroid’s course,” a recording of Dr. Troy’s voice cut in. “There isn’t enough time to stop it. The asteroid somehow appeared out of nowhere, and none of our asteroid trackers caught it in time.”
The humans were panicking. They had forgotten all about him. But he had thought back to the days he had spent in the lab, and remembered the engineers discussing trajectories and orbits and things. And he still had his thrusters, designed to correct his course if he wandered out it so he would make it home at just the right angle.
Now he could see the asteroid, a small dull object that wandered lazily in the direction towards Earth. It seemed hard to believe that the humans were afraid of it. Turning his thrusters on, he hurled himself toward the asteroid.
It was farther away than it had seemed. Rover was used to drifting slowly through space, but the waiting was unbearable this time. He could not fall asleep, because he might reach the giant rock at any moments, but he had no way of knowing how far away it was.
He amused himself by looking at the asteroid with different colored filters, but it was such a boring object that it stopped being fun after a while. The radio had stopped playing music altogether, and all he could find on the stations were more panicked news announcers.
And quite suddenly, Rover found himself looking at the asteroid close-up. It might have been large, but he was used to the Martian mountains, which dwarfed everything in comparison. Bracing himself for the impact, Rover took one last look over his shoulder at the blue planet. That was the last thing he saw….
“Rover! Rover!” a squeaky voice was saying. Rover jumped and opened his eyes to see a large telescope viewing him with concern. “You alright, Rover?”
“I don’t know,” Rover said. “What happened?”
“You’ve been out of it for a bit,” a sleek satellite explained. “It was a lot of work trying to get your computer running again.”
Rover looked around. He was missing many of the instruments he had carried. He also had the curious sensation of having no wheels.
“Sorry. That impact with the big rock really broke you up,” the satellite said.
“Did I stop it in time?” Rover asked anxiously.
“Yeah. The impact changed the asteroid’s course so it just barely avoided Earth. You’ll never make it back home, but you’ll be in the history books for sure. But putting all that aside, welcome to orbit!”
“Orbit? Orbit where?” Rover said. Then he glanced down. Far below them, he could see the clouds whirling over Earth. The planet glowed blue and white, much brighter than he remembered. The oceans gleamed in the sunlight, and the continents were all green and orange-tan. He reached out his white, robotic hand and suddenly felt small – even smaller than he had next to Olympus Mons, the great Martian mountain.
“Imagine… being sent off into space to orbit a planet forever,” the space probe’s voice echoed in Rover’s head.
“It’s not so bad,” Rover said out loud.
Corny Chronicles 