Elaina. In search of a planet.

Martian guardians, part 6

Amano knew Biospheri's plan well and was heading for the communications console, where there was a black box that could explain the situation.
Suddenly, a flashlight beam illuminated a human hand lying on the control panel. Next, a man sitting on a chair, buried in the control panel. He was without a space suit, it immediately became clear that he was dead.
"Janos, I found someone," Max said on the radio. "Now I'm taking the box and coming back." The commander approached the corpse, raised his head and was horrified.
The face was so disfigured that it was impossible to recognize the person. It was cut with sand and the adhering layer of Martian soil became even redder with blood. Most importantly, there is no damage here. Walls and equipment -- all whole. How could a man, with his facial scalp removed, sit inside this room. What if the sandstorm almost didn't hit here?
The commander put the corpse on the Spider and ordered him to head for the exit, while he himself pulled out a black box and followed him. In front of the hole near the exit, a hand stuck out of the sand. As if ominously saying goodbye to an uninvited guest, once again emphasizing the lifelessness of the Biosphere.
After a while aboard the Striver, the astronauts watched the black box recording. It was the last hours of the habitation module.
On this deadly Martian day, after which twenty-two hours had passed, the station's scientists were waiting for the results of a flyby of an unmanned aerial vehicle. Which should photograph the Martian sphinx from a close distance and clarify the nature of this phenomenon.
The device was approaching a mountain three hundred meters high and one and a half kilometers across. Rather, an ensemble of mountains, repeating the features of a human face facing the sky. As the copter got closer, the details became clearer. The outlines of giant stone blocks appeared, smoothly hewn and stacked one on one, erecting a Martian sphinx. The apparatus flew slowly over the large, bulging lips and long nose, eye socket, and stone hair. Then he turned back, through his forehead, in order to more clearly examine the stone tear and the eye.
The tear consisted of two blocks, tightly adjacent to each other and weighed several tens of tons. The eyes are about a hundred meters wide. One eye was closed. And in the other, instead of a pupil, a huge funnel revealed itself as a dark spot. The sensors showed a depth of tens of meters.
The aircraft approached the eye and directed a beam of light, illuminating the edges of the funnel, smooth to a shine. In bright reflections, a reflection of a slowly descending copter appeared. The device was in a pupil several tens of meters wide. At a depth of half a hundred meters, the aircraft hovered. The bottom appeared filled with Martian soil.
A minute later, one of the scientists noticed a slow rotation of the bottom. Everyone started staring at the monitors. Indeed, the sensors recorded the circular movement of the sand below. Dust has risen. The sandy bottom of the pupil also began to rise. The rotation quickly intensified.
A commander of the Biosphere ordered the craft to return to base, which instantly responded to the command. The copter soared up. Flew out of the eye of the sphinx, moving away from the mysterious place. The second camera captured the rising storm around the Martian monument.
A few hours later, the research apparatus returned, having flown several hundred kilometers. Meanwhile, scientists puzzled over the artificial origin of the giant face and its even more mysterious eye. The pupil of which, like a guard, stood guard against uninvited intrusions.
Even more exciting was the fact that the orbiting satellites recorded the approaching storm, exactly from the place where the sphinx was located. A huge mass of red dust followed on the heels of the copter.
The inhabitants of the Biosphere behaved calmly, knowing that the crater would serve as protection from a strong hurricane. The wind began to intensify. The sandstorm passed through the half-kilometer walls of the crater. Some structures of the base began to fall, not designed for such a force. The scientists were calm, hoping for their strong domed houses.
All these events were captured by four cameras that recorded conversations and what was happening, transmitting information to a black box. Striver's crew sat staring at the recording on the multi-screen monitor, where simultaneous events were recorded from different points of the station. Everyone was shocked and waited for the denouement, that is, the cause of death. Could the sandstorm have pierced through the steel plating of the Biosphere?