It hits like a beach ball, landing and bouncing for what must be miles. And it is a beach ball, a million tiny beach balls, layer upon layer of high tech bubble wrap. In time this covering deflates and in its surface a tear appears and through this emerges a mechanical gadget rolling on thick rubber treads.
The rover.
This pilgrim wanders from its now collapsed vessel. Gray sands extend forever. In the distance a colorless mountain. The rover turns in place, its motors whirring. Sensors lick the air. It rolls along, leaving tracks in fine grit. A drill bores holes in ground. It rolls along, it drills down again.
An array of antennae extend and data is hurled into the ether. The call is returned, the voice of home responds, the antennae retract. The rover rolls along, it drills down again.
Time goes on. The rover descends into craters. It climbs hills and dunes. It tastes dirt and sifts through primordial rock. It calls into the ether. The call is returned, the voice of home responds.
In time these quests grow redundant. Each examined wonder has been seen a dozen times, a hundred times, a thousand. Each element tested brings a result long known and stale. This is dirt. This is dirt. This is dirt. Antennae extend, the call goes out. The rover sits. It waits. It sends the call again. It waits. The call is not returned. The voice of home is silent. The rover waits. It sends the call again.
Dust drifts on cold wind. A mound accumulates about the stilled rover. An alien sun passes by, indifferent to the rover’s longing. Over and over that star goes on spinning by in the passing of eons. The rover has ceased its calling. The rover has ceased its everything.
Then one day.
Fire cuts the sky. A boiling streak rushes by overhead and in a bright flash disappears in the distance. The rover stirs. It shakes the collected dust of years from its skin. It rolls along.
Land goes by, and days. Then comes a glint still some miles off, a shimmer of some object moving under the touch of that foreign starshine. The rover stops. It sits, waiting, watching. That object moves about, too far off to be discerned, only the periodic flash of the sun's reflection making its presence known at all. The rover rolls along.
Features reveal themselves as distance is overcome. A square body is propelled along by eight steel legs.
The crawler.
It bends and leans and a rod probes the soil underneath its form. It turns in place and again tastes the earth. It goes about these tasks on knifeblade legs with arachnic grace.
The rover approaches. The crawler ceases its probing. It raises up, tall and aware. The rover comes near. They each wait. Then, in time, these travelers so far from home extend their sensors, each reaching out for the other.
-- Craig Rodgers is the name appearing on several books ghostwritten by a gaggle of long dead Victorian spirits.