Mars.
An unknown number of meters underground.
Standing in an empty "great hall," Dr. Fan wore an expression of utter bewilderment.
Common sense told him there could be no signal here, much less a human voice.
So when the words "Can you hear me?" echoed in his ears, he briefly wondered whether dehydration had made him hallucinate.
When he failed to respond, a trace of hesitation crept into the intermittent voice, which muttered as though talking to itself.
"Strange... could something be wrong with the translator? That shouldn't be possible."
...Translator?
What was that?
Recovering from his bewilderment, Fan Tong swept his flashlight around, searching for the source of the radio signal as he replied.
"I can hear you... who are you?"
The surrounding hematite severely limited signal penetration. Given his full signal bars, the source should have been nearby. Yet even after sweeping every corner of the hall with his flashlight, Fan Tong saw no sign of any electronic equipment.
"Stop looking." Watching Fan Tong scan his surroundings, the voice in the communications channel suddenly took on an amused tone. "If you could find me here, that would really be entertaining."
Gradually realizing his efforts were pointless, Fan Tong drew a deep breath and abandoned his futile search.
He reached out to touch the transparent wall again, then nervously stepped back half a pace and repeated his earlier question in a wary tone.
"Who exactly are you? Could you be..."
"Could I be?"
"Could you be... a Martian?"
He uttered the words with a tremor in his voice.
But as Fan Tong anxiously waited for an answer, the communications channel suddenly fell silent.
The silence lasted about a minute.
Just as he began to suspect he had guessed correctly and that bizarre-looking alien soldiers were on their way to