Marco woke Dalton up early, his face told it all. “Dalton, Emman—wake up. There’s a problem.” He shook Emmanuel, who had come in during the night to sleep a shift.

Dalton could smell the problem through the open door.

Smoke.

The whiff of a wildfire in the early morn.

The sun was casting a heavy pink and orange hues on the six AM landscape and every direction the faint gray of smoke suspended in the air muted the scene. Ridges gained a ghostly obscurity the farther they were from him. The closest, a faint pastel, growing more grey until the third ridge of the Sierras showed only dim smokey outlines of the forest—all soon to be inflamed.

“Don’t worry, they designed this facility around the certainty of fire. But they’ve asked us to help.” Marco said.

And it was true. The siding was white stucco, and the house set back from the hill's crest. The immediate zone around the house had dirt or rock gardens. A small wall enclosed the entire compound for at least one hundred feet. All communications and support buildings were the same.

“It started on the other side of the dish.” Marco said, pointing to the grayed satellite dish. “It shut down automatically in the night.”

“So, how much data did we get?” Dalton asked.

“Enough. No change in probe status.”

For the next hour, Dalton and many others did a perimeter sweep of the complex, cutting down anything that had tried to grow during the last season. It was easy work, owing to the heavy grazing of the goats. It consisted mostly of walking around in ever-widening circles and hacking down anything the goats didn't eat, which appeared to Dalton to be only one species of plant.

He was on simple dust and sparse vegetation. The artificiality of the compound was again obvious on the landscape, though everything had taken a gray tone. He could see on the ground flecks of ash.

“We keep getting hit by bad luck.” Emman stated, almost to no one but himself.

“Oh, I dunno, the chances align, you know? Chance of fire in August? High. Chance of fire spreading in August? High. Chance of fire when electricity is out? Very high.” Dalton sighed, “But yeah, a bit too unlucky,” Dalton said.

The property staff was doing a burn of the pile of small plants and grasses they had collected.

Helicopters and aircraft were fighting the fire, which was threatening Reno. He knew the fire would be contained. Dalton washed up and then got to work. Within a few hours, the wind changed, and the fire reversed course. It passed around the complex with no problems.

He checked the news, still occupying a small portion of the wall-screen.

It was almost like Reno was the target. Dalton thought. He went over to the AI team and asked them about the night.

“Sonar’s on the fritz again, but nothing’s new from the probe. Your forked AIs converged on the same task. Dive, collect, and reemerge in about sixteen hours. The dish here is fried, but the Internet’s back.” the team lead said.

Someone yelled look, and they all looked obeyed. The news ticker scrawled along:

“Turn it up,” someone said. But the news at the moment wasn’t about the speech.

“Nine local time is five PM here,” someone replied.

The hours dragged on. They restored power in Reno. The graphite bomb did not cause any lingering damage. The news speculated the device was put in orbit years ago and lurked as 'space-junk' until the Chinese needed it. Once the power lines were cleared, the safety relays were reset. The efforts were minimal. The forest fire was also contained. Support and electrical crews from around the West poured in to help Reno, but most were idle now.

Dalton’s shift ended. Same story, no matter what data he changed. The probe would go down, look for life, and come back up.

How long it was down was a matter of debate. It was at least sixty miles to descend. One hundred kilometers of water (assuming no seamounts). They had landed in an active region, known to have fissures through the ice, (estimated by the Europa Clipper to be less than a kilometer thick). They had melted through barely two ship lengths of ice to liquid fissures. The melting was the slowest. It might descend at 10 km/h, drop the ballast plaque, then 8 km/h back up. But to melt back through a kilometer of ice? That was like one meter and an hour. Three orders of magnitude slow. Of course, the probe would try to ascend back up the ice rift, but there was no guarantee. Before it even got to the ice, the probe would transmit data back through the sub-ice relay. In all his simulations, the machine could successfully navigate back.

Europa’s ice sheets were contorted continuously by Jupiter’s pull. A shaft could be pulled apart from each orbit, and a new frozen infill would prop it open, keeping the shaft alive. Then in the next orbit, Europa and Jupiter would dance again, distorting the ice shell as before. But one ice fault was always in competition with every other fault. Another nearby fault could have overtaken the first shaft, closing it forever.

Now it was the time of the Chinese announcement.

The news directly translated it.

“China has long sought to show the world the most glorious method of civilization—”

“Now we have another great leap to share with humanity. Chinese scientists have confirmed that our probe on Mars has detected alien life. We share this discovery with the world and petition for peace. Once our scientists have published, we will release all Chinese scientific progress into the world.”

At that, the air ran out of everyone’s balloon.

The room was stone cold silent. Jaws dropped. Then a low wail emerged from someone in the room. Scooped.

“Bullshit,” another said.

“I couldn't hear him with the overdub,” a native Chinese speaker said.

Then the room erupted in disdain. They aimed varied arguments and insults at the screen, “All they did was repeat the Viking experiment!” / “How convenient they are not near the Mars colony.” / “Show me the data.” / “They only landed on Mars in 2021!”

“Okay Team. Pipe down.” Jim yelled. “You want to beat them at this game? Then find multicellular life! What’s the best-case scenario for seeing the probe again?” Jim increased his tone. “Ignore the claims. Focus on our data. Every hour brings more data.”

It was impossible to squelch the unexpected Chinese announcement. Phones lit up, buzzed, and blinked. Notifications from the staff’s colleagues or grad students began. First as a flurry, then a blizzard.

A few showed signs of hopelessness: blanched skin, going to the bathroom, getting fresh air.

Dalton was at first shocked, then confused. The Chinese beat the Western World to detecting life? How? He thought to himself. With his head in his hands, he thought more. The Chinese has purposely landed far away from the Mars Colony in Hellas Planitia, the lowest point and a place no other probe had landed. That site also had signs of lava tubes. Meanwhile, the Mars Colony landed on Arcadia Planitia, which wasn’t exactly on the opposite side of Mars, but was still impossible for the colony to visit overland.

But now Dalton’s confidence returned as a roguish smile emerged on his face. He went outside to process the facts—or rather, the information he had. Fresh air always helps. On a rock facing east, he cleared his mind in the smokey air. The outside had not in fact been ‘clear’ and a pall still hung around Reno.

The Chinese National Space Agency handled all robotic missions in the solar system. They had built, launched, and landed their Martian probe in only four years. It had taken six years for their Europa probe to even reach Jupiter. Plus four years prior of planning and development. The CNSA already had a communications satellite in Martian orbit and its data streams were encrypted and beamed back to Earth, and sent straight to the Chinese Deep Space Network (CDSN) via their Tianlian III satellites in geo-sync orbit.

Some of these facts Dalton looked up on his phone while sitting there, others he had known. Now he added to it with rumors: Chinese biowarfare scientists were experimenting with exotic life. Synthetic biology, artificial cells. Not proven, but not impossible.

But the fact was, the commercialization of engineered cellular agriculture had gone on for over two decades in the West. What was not surprising, nor hidden, was the adoption of cellular ag. in China. There was talent, money, and mouths for this research. More than enough of a plausible cover story for the hidden research: creating a Martian life-form, and planting it on Mars.

His rampant speculation made him smile. He had figured it out in his own point-of-view. Right now it was all red-string, push-pins, and articles hung around in the shambled corkboard of his mind.

Marco came outside and found him. “Dalton! Come quick. More data!”

Dalton got up suddenly and looked back at Marco. Then he ran inside. It better be multicellular life.