“Oh, you mean Curiosity?” Carl volunteered from behind Tom, moving into camera view along side and appearing to their distant audience. “No, I’m sure it isn’t although, that would have been the closest rover that we have. Curiosity landed six years ago in the Gale Crater, about two thousand clicks west of here, and I doubt it could have climbed those crater walls. Besides, I don’t remember it looking quite like that. Curiosity was much larger than this one outside, more like the size of a car. This one’s only about the size of a quad-runner.” he added gesturing toward the porthole.
“Well, whatever the damned thing is,” Tom resumed, “we’ll get a better look at it in a day or two, after we complete a full systems check on board. Plus, we still need to conduct an exterior damage assessment. There are some external problems we already know about, but we’re going to perform a more thorough exam. Our second venture outside will be an EVA to investigate those piles of rock being gathered by the rover.”
“We might want to step up that time table, Tom,” Brandon said worriedly, staring out the porthole through binoculars. As he passed the field-glasses to Tom, he added, “See that large rotary drill bit on the rover’s third arm? As the rover changed course, the drill started spinning. The rover is now heading straight toward us and looks like it’s going to attack the Hab!”
Tom gave an unbelieving look, “At this distance you could see the drill start up?”
Brandon replied, “Well, I was watching it with the field-glasses and when it began spinning, a bunch of Mars dust flew off in all directions. Had it not been for the dust, I probably wouldn’t have spotted the drill, at all.”
“It might just be re-positioning itself,” Carl offered, scoffing at the suggestion. “Why would it attack the Hab? Who would be directing it to do that?”