Our Distant Cousins

An international manned mission to Mars takes off in the year 2048 when world has become peaceful and cooperative. The crew consists of Nikolai Commander from Russia, Henry from USA, Hermann from Germany, Dr Nakamura from Japan, Dr Bophela from South Africa and a young girl Ashwini from India. The mission faces a few problems but landing on Mars is successful. They soon find that the gas plant which was placed on Mars by previous missions is not working. This gas plant is supposed to produce fuel for mission's return journey. The crew realizes the mission control on earth knew about the malfunction of the gas plant. The options in front of the crew are to stay and die on Mars or make an effort to manage fuel for return journey. Crew becomes partly successful in their hunt for fuel. They accidentally come across an underground civilization of Martians and become their captives. Later the crew realizes that Martians do not have any ill-will and are actually friendly. During their stay on Mars the crew learns many things from Martians. They understand the universe better and learn about the origin and future of mankind. Does the crew succeed in returning to earth?

Autorentext

Shrinivas Sharangpani is a metallurgical engineer by qualification. After retiring from an automobile company in 2009 he works as a consultant and expert in benchmarking, value engineering and materials. He has several short stories, novels and poems to his credit. He writes in English and his native language Marathi.