It had been fifteen hours since the Voyager left lunar orbit. Mars loomed ahead, growing larger with each passing minute.

Liam hadn't been idle during those fifteen hours. While Lucy piloted the starship at minimum sustainable velocity, he'd spent nearly every waking moment in the Voyager's training facility.

The facility occupied an entire deck, a vast space designed specifically for superhuman conditioning. Gravity could be adjusted from zero to five times Earth normal. Environmental controls could simulate everything from arctic cold to volcanic heat. Obstacles materialized through hard-light projections, creating scenarios that would challenge even the most advanced metahuman.

Liam had pushed himself harder than he had in weeks. His powers had stagnated over the past month, trapped at the same level while he dealt with other things. But here, with nothing but time and space between destinations, he could finally focus on improvement.

He'd worked on expanding his telekinetic field, pushing the radius outward meter by meter until sweat soaked through his clothes. His maximum flight speed had increased by nearly twenty percent. And he'd discovered something new—a way to sense electromagnetic fields within his telekinetic range, giving him awareness of electronic devices and power sources. The ability isn't strong enough yet but he intends to make it stronger in the coming days.

For him, this was progress. Real, measurable progress.

When Lucy's voice came through the comm system announcing their approach to Mars, Liam decided to call it a day. He showered quickly, washing away the physical exhaustion, then made his way to the flight deck.

Through the massive viewport, Mars dominated the view. The red planet hung against the black void, its rust-colored surface marked with ancient valleys and impact craters.

On a holographic screen, he saw Olympus Mons rising from the southern hemisphere, the largest volcano in the solar system, three times the height of Mount Everest.

Liam sat in the captain's chair, staring at the planet with childlike excitement. This was it. His first alien world. Not truly alien in the sense of harboring extraterrestrial civilization, but alien in that no human feet had ever touched most of its surface.

"I'm going down," he announced, standing up abruptly.

"Do you want me to prepare a landing party? I can have survey drones ready in ten minutes," Lucy suggested.

"No need. Just me." Liam grinned. "I want to see it myself."

Lucy smiled at his enthusiasm. "Understood. The starship will maintain orbital position until you return."

Liam headed for the private elevator, calling it with a gesture. As he waited, he activated his exosuit. The nanites flowed from his wrist like liquid mercury, spreading across his body in seconds. The material solidified into the familiar form-fitting armor, the helmet enclosing his head with a soft, almost inaudible hiss as the seal engaged.

The elevator descended rapidly through the starship's decks. When it stopped at the docking bay, Liam stepped out into the massive space. His space shuttle waited in its berth, the circular boarding platform already extended.

Minutes later, the shuttle cleared the Voyager's docking bay and began its descent toward Mars. Liam sat in the pilot's seat, hands resting on the controls even though the autopilot handled most of the work. Through the viewport, Mars grew from a sphere to a world, its surface features resolving into sharp detail.

The shuttle entered the thin Martian atmosphere with barely a tremor. Mars had only one percent of Earth's atmospheric density, not enough to create the dramatic reentry heating that spacecraft experienced coming home. The descent was smooth, almost gentle.

Touchdown came with a soft thud. The circular platform extended downward, and Liam stepped out onto the surface of Mars.

The ground beneath his boots felt strange. Not quite sand, not quite dust—something in between. The rust-red regolith compressed slightly under his weight, then held firm. Each step left a clear impression, a mark that would remain undisturbed for years in the absence of wind erosion.

Liam looked around, taking in the alien landscape. The sky overhead was a pale butterscotch color, nothing like Earth's blue. The Sun appeared smaller, dimmer, providing only forty percent of the light it gave Earth. Shadows stretched long across the rocky terrain, making everything appear slightly flatter, less dimensional.

The landscape itself was desolate. Rocks scattered across rust-colored plains that stretched to the horizon. In the distance, the wall of a crater rose against the sky, its rim catching the weak sunlight. No plants, no animals, no movement except the slow drift of dust particles disturbed by his landing.

Liam crouched down and scooped up a handful of the red regolith. The material felt dry and powdery, slipping between his fingers like flour. He crushed the remnant in his palm, feeling the grit compress into a loose cake before crumbling again.

Standing, he began to walk, each step a small leap in the low gravity. Mars had only thirty-eight percent of Earth's gravitational pull, making movement feel bouncy and light.

As far as Liam knew, Mars didn't have much to offer. The planet was essentially a cold desert with a barely-there atmosphere and a surface coated in iron oxide. But it shared certain similarities with Earth—a twenty-four-hour day, polar ice caps, evidence of ancient water flows.

Scientists had speculated for decades about the possibility of microbial life, perhaps surviving in underground aquifers or preserved in permafrost.

That speculation was what brought Liam here. He wanted to know. Was there life on Mars, even in its most primitive form?

He couldn't search the entire planet—that would take months, maybe years. But he could check the most promising locations. Areas where orbital surveys had detected subsurface ice. Regions with mineral deposits that suggested past water activity. Places where, if life had ever existed on Mars, it might still cling to survival.

For hours, Liam searched. He used his telekinetic sense to probe beneath the surface, feeling for pockets of water or unusual chemical signatures. He examined rock formations, looking for the kinds of layered sediments that might preserve fossilized microbes. He even dug down several meters in promising locations, hoping to find something—anything—that hinted at biology.

Nothing.

Every site turned up empty. The rocks were just rocks. The ice was just frozen water and carbon dioxide. No organic molecules, no cellular structures, no metabolic activity. Mars was, as far as he could determine, completely sterile.

Liam stood on a ridge overlooking a dried riverbed that had once carried water billions of years ago, and felt a mixture of disappointment and relief.

Disappointed because discovering Martian life would have been incredible. Even simple bacteria would have revolutionized humanity's understanding of biology and the prevalence of life in the universe. It would have been a discovery worthy of the history books.

But relieved too, because the absence of life made everything simpler. No ethical concerns about contamination. No worries about disrupting an alien ecosystem. No debates about the rights of Martian microbes versus human expansion.

Yeah, humans just love to complicate things.

It wouldn't be bad if he met those Martians from movies. Even the scary, killer single cell entity too wouldn't be that bad. But of course, Liam will have to deal with it immediately.

Just remembering that horror movie gave him the chills.

Luckily for Liam, Mars was a blank canvas, waiting to be transformed.

Since Mars had nothing to offer, Liam decided to leave. But before he did, he wants to bring rock and soil samples.

Liam spent the next thirty minutes gathering specimens. He broke off chunks of rock from different formations, each one potentially telling a different story about Mars's geological history. He filled a container with regolith from several locations. Another container held ice samples from a shallow subsurface deposit.

Then he established the access point on the planet. This way, Lucy would be able to transport materials directly to Mars without needing to physically ship them through space.

"Run the analysis on these samples when you get them. I want to know exactly what we're working with if we're going to terraform this place," Liam said to Lucy.

"Understood. Estimated time to full terraforming viability?"

"That's what I want you to figure out. Let's let me know what you find out and we take things from there." Liam started walking back toward the shuttle.

He reached the shuttle and climbed aboard, the platform retracting beneath him. As the craft lifted off, Liam took one last look at the Martian surface below.

***

The shuttle docked with the Voyager twenty minutes later. An android met Liam at the airlock, taking the sample containers to Lucy's laboratory section for analysis.

Liam deactivated his exosuit and headed back to the flight deck. Through the viewport, Mars was already shrinking as the starship accelerated away, heading deeper into the solar system.

"Next stop?" Lucy asked.

"The asteroid belt first. Then Jupiter." Liam settled into the captain's chair.

Liam thought about Jupiter and he couldn't help but feel a sense of dread as he thought of the Great Red Spot—the colossal, persistent anticyclonic storm, larger than Earth, known for its iconic reddish hue and powerful winds. Just the thought of something so massive sent a strong chilling sensation down his spine.

Does he plan to go into the oldest storm in the solar system? He's still on the fence about that. But does he plan to go into Jupiter? Absolutely.

Who doesn't want to visit the gas giant especially when he has the resources to do that. Everyone is curious about what's on the surface of the planet. The planet viability to support life is completely out of the picture but if it do have solid land, then maybe scientist can think of what benefits it could have for humanity. But in this case, it's Lucy that will think of what benefits it would offer Liam.

Still thinking about the gas giant, Liam thought of something else. Something he feels is crazy and a childish smile spread across his face.

"Actually, I've been thinking. This whole exploration—visiting these places that humans have only seen through telescopes and probes—it feels wrong to experience it alone."

"Wrong how?"

"I want to share it. Not everything, obviously. But some of it." Liam leaned forward, warming to the idea as he spoke. "What if we did livestreams? Through Nova Technologies' LucidNet account. Show people what it's really like out here."

Lucy was quiet for a moment, processing. "You want to broadcast your location in the solar system?"

"Not my identity. I won't show my face or tell them my name. But as the CEO of Nova Technologies?"

"The security implications—"

"Are minimal. Nobody can reach me out here except you. And even if they could, so what? Let them try." Liam grinned. "Besides, can you imagine the reactions when people see someone standing on an asteroid? Or floating above Jupiter's clouds?"

Lucy considered this, running probability matrices and risk assessments. Finally, she nodded. "It would generate significant attention for the company. And the technological demonstration would be... impressive. I can modulate your voice to prevent identification."

"Perfect. We'll do the first one at the asteroid belt. That gives us..." Liam checked the navigation display. "About twenty—five hours to prepare."

"I'll make the announcement on LucidNet."

Liam stood and stretched. "I'm going to get some rest. Wake me when we're approaching the belt."

He headed for his quarters, already imagining the chaos that would erupt when hundreds of millions of people tuned in to watch someone casually floating through an asteroid field.

The future of space exploration, broadcast live to a waiting world. It was going to be spectacular.

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