Zhao Gang held a large stone aloft with both hands. He came breezing into the room, urgently thrusting it 10 centimeters from my face.

“You see what I found under my bed?”

I looked at him, then turned to the object in his hands.

“A stone.”

“Mhmm! But get this...I never put it there to begin with.”

He had a point. Nowhere on the stone was there a space agency logo.

I put down what I was holding, leaned back, and said, “the crux being you’ve experienced Cook’s Displacement.”

Zhao Gang nodded vigorously. Eyes burning, he flapped about like an idiot.

Cook’s Displacement is a strange and uniquely Martian phenomenon. On the third human mission to Mars, a surveyor named Cook discovered a stone had materialized from nowhere under his bed, after which a spate of similar events occurred. As a result, this fellow Cook, who was only ever concerned before with space-travel and women, had lent his name to a specialized term. Experts had attempted to research the principles underlying these unexplained stones, but nothing came of it. The final conclusion was that the stones had come from the surface of Mars. Utter nonsense!

Oddly enough, such displacement took place frequently within the observation base itself, but never outside. Some psychologists believed the explorers themselves had brought in these “Cook Stones” during spells of mental confusion. Insinuations of this nature lead to swift protest from the astronauts. Once, Cook chose to sarcastically declare at a meeting that such an explanation must have come out of one of their more drunken parties.

Zhao Gang opened the communication channel, reporting to base.

I got on with my own work.

A few keystrokes in, something flashed across my mind. I abruptly pushed the table aside, knocking into the shelf behind me.

“What’s the matter?” Zhao Gang asked, astonished.

I remained silent, gazing out the window.

Outside, Mars monopolized the view, distant and unfathomable. Upon finding a Cook Stone, protocol dictated we had to immediately pass it up the chain of command.

But I had other ideas...

“Control!” I patched in on the emergency communication channel, “I’d like to run a little experiment.”

“Please explain.”

“I have an intuition that the stones will undergo another displacement. Likely, there is a kind of force field, and whenever it changes, these stones experience spatial displacement. From what I can gather, it will manifest as a sudden disappearance.”

“But there’s no prior indication of stones having vanished. All of them were transported back to Earth fully intact.”

“Correct, but until now we’ve been removing them all from their original positions.”

Base went briefly silent, returning with: “Roger. A cogent observation. You two may proceed.”

I shut off the communicator, addressing a dazed Zhao Gang:

“Go put this thing back where you found it. In two hours, I’ll head off to bed. First, I’ll nap six hours while you’re on watch and keep an eye on the status of the stone. After that, I’ll take over from you.”

He gave a nod and turned to leave, but then something popped into his head, jerking it back to ask:

“Why aren’t you taking first shift?”

I eased into my chair, smiling faintly: “Rock, paper, scissors?”

Two hours later, I gave the equipment a once-over, and patted Zhao Gang on the shoulder:

“Eyes peeled, no drifting off. Did you place the transmitter inside?”

Zhao Gang nodded a confirmation without lifting his eyes.

I chuckled and made off for bed.

I was in a dream. There is dense red fog and swirling rubble. A voice comes from deep within the surrounding haze. Several oddly-shaped stones skitter before my eyes, a display of unchecked ferocity. Next they form a ring, and start spinning up a turmoil that blurs my vision.

“I feel as though I know this place,” I repeat to myself in the dream.

“Wake up! Jiang Hua!”

I regained consciousness just as my mind was dismissing the dream-world as illogical. Zhao Gang was bent over eying me, a trace of panic in his gaze.

“What in the world...?”

I glanced at my watch.

“Ugh, there’s still 3 hours left...”

“They’re gone!”

Of the stones originally placed on the bed, all that remained was a small object with a golden luster. I recognized this to be the transmitter. The stones were nowhere to be found. It was as if they had vanished into thin air.

“Okay, at least we know the field has no effect on gold...”

I picked up the transmitter and looked at Zhao Gang, “How did it happen?”

Zhao Gang shot me an uncomfortable look. He had the jitters; it was written in his nervous smile.

“Were you sleeping when you shouldn’t have been?” I interrogated.

He tensed but said nothing.

“Ok, we’ll address that later. First, bring up the surveillance footage.”

From the surveillance footage the stones could be seen to flash a few times, then disappear. We slowed down the footage. First we saw the stones propped motionless on the bed, but then it was like a hibernating creature flickering to life. The frequency grew faster and faster. Much like the spokes on a bicycle wheel, you could make them out at first, but after that it was just a blur. In the sub-millisecond range, there was no way to be certain of the rate, and then the stones disappeared. The transmitter slowly, and most elegantly, sailed back down under the Martian gravity.

I watched the frame. A sudden sentimentality welled up in me.

Freeze frame.

I fell back into my chair, saying lightly, “Report to Base.”

Control showed keen interest in our experiment’s results and indicated we were to turn over all future video data for research, also hinting at a pay raise.

During our break, Zhao Gang and I engaged in a game of Go.

At first blush, the reasoning of those on Earth who lashed out against Mars exploration made sense: Almost half the time, exploration can be carried out without human participation. Computers in tandem with remote-operated robots suffice for whatever task is thrown at them. All that’s left for people to do the other half of the time is surveillance, and to try not to screw things up. Ordinarily speaking, Mars explorers don’t have it too hard. The opposition had a field day with the first published anthology of Mars poetry, seeing it as further proof of the explorers’ ineffectiveness.

Yet in reality, Mars explorers stare down calamity at every corner. On such a vast and alien planet, with such a complexity of interlocking systems, one small slip spells disaster. It means cutting one’s life short. The psychological burden is immense. Those ensconced on Earth with their fireplaces and horns of plenty—picking their teeth here and chatting away there—can hardly imagine.

As such, every explorer is compelled to have at least two amateur pastimes they can pursue on Mars. The space agency even made a point to stipulate in the regulations that each explorer is to carry three hobby items with them, and shared hobbies will be given due consideration during group assignment.

It’s a pity that the leadership of the agency couldn’t distinguish between “grade” and “rank.” As a result this third grade Go player must square off with the second ranked Zhao Gang. A handicap was unavoidable.

Zhao Gang picked at his fingernails again, complaining of nerves. In reality, by this point the white side clearly had the upper hand, and was occupying a great proportion of the lower half.

He’d take the board again...I stared out the window into the distance, saying nothing.

I suddenly broke into laughter. It was just too obvious. How did it take so long to click?

Registering my laughter, Zhao Gang lifted his head, fixing me with an indignant scowl.

“No! I wasn’t laughing at you!” I said, still laughing, as I explained. “I know what Base Control has in mind.”

He pushed aside the Go board, saying, “Alright, I can’t win anyway, so would you mind telling me what this is all about?”

“If my hunch about a field is correct,” I said amicably, “and judging from what we’ve seen, it can operate repeatedly within the same space, within which objects may pass through to another location via application of a certain wave. It’s teleportation!”

Thinking out loud Zhao Gang added, “But we’ve no idea how far, or even if the teleportation velocity exceeds the speed of light...”

I nodded in agreement. “This is precisely what Base Control fears! We’re confronting a technology that’s unprecedented in the history of humanity. A technology we’ve only ever dreamed of...Hey, I think we’re well beyond the question of a pay raise.”

We traded smiles. Without saying anything, we both knew the score.

“Did you feel that?” He asked suddenly.

The question threw me off-kilter. “What?”

“Just now I felt a tremor around us...an earthquake?”

I regarded him wryly, ready to needle him with a joke, when it hit me.

“Teleportation!” I shouted.

“The field’s acting again. Your bed! Let’s take a look at your bed!”

The two of us practically fell over each other, racing to the side of his bed.

Now there were two rocks, each relatively small, and separated by a distance of about 40 centimeters. As our four hands swooped in, without warning, a second group of rocks materialized next to them.

This time I felt the tremor too, and holding Zhao Gang back, I said:

“Hold up! There’s something funky going on here.”

This second group of stones formed an equilateral triangle. We then gazed over to the spot where we suspected a third group might appear.

Sure enough, after two minutes or so, our surroundings shook, and a trapezoid popped into existence.

My heart pumped wildly. Meaning! These three groups of stones conveyed meaning! Nature alone could not perform such feats of magic for us. But then I considered nervously just what that meaning might be.

I knew time was tight. The next group of stones would be here in no time and we had no clue when the show would be over. I had to seize this chance.

One obvious inference was this: That the next set (assuming there was one) would contain five stones. But what could this tell us? The three existing groups were all orientated in symmetrical patterns. Might it perhaps be useful to determine their axis of symmetry? Maybe if we were to extend the lines of the three axes, they would meet at one point? How about measuring the edge lengths? Which unit would I use?