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short stories - Story about astronauts who set off an alien warning beacon on the moon (or Mars?)


MY father and I were talking about sci-fi stories we've read over the years. He asked if I had ever read



"that one about those astronauts on the moon, or maybe Mars?. I don't remember much, except these astronaut guys discover this piece of alien technology laying there on the ground, conspicuously unmarred and free of the all-pervading Martian (or perhaps lunar) dust, emitting a ringing or buzzing sound that could be heard through their suits and the vaccum of space or whatever."




I suppose there was some back and forth dialogue between these cosmic pioneers and maybe even a dash of Mission Control piping in with their two cents from back on Terra Firma for flavor. However the details played out, human nature being what it is, these astronauts eventually reached down, said 'screw it,' and found the balls to pick it up.


The sound (signal?) stopped immediately. The artifact--I think he said it was box shaped and metallic--was some type of "Those crazy-ass hairless apes finally managed to crawl off their rock" detection system. So long as the insane little chimps were swinging from limb to limb, clubbing each other over the heads down on Mother Earth, the signal kept pulsing steadily out into space towards whatever planet these mysterious extraterrestrials called home sweet home.



Answer



You're describing "The Sentinel" by Arthur C. Clarke, the story that became the foundation for the moon sequence in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.


Per wikipedia



The story deals with the discovery of an artifact on Earth's Moon left behind eons ago by ancient aliens. The object is made of a polished mineral, is tetrahedral in shape, and is surrounded by a spherical forcefield. The narrator speculates at one point that the mysterious aliens who left this structure on the Moon may have used mechanisms belonging "to a technology that lies beyond our horizons, perhaps to the technology of para-physical forces."


The narrator speculates that for millions of years (evidenced by dust buildup around its forcefield) the artifact has been transmitting signals into deep space, but it ceases to transmit when, sometime later, it is destroyed "with the savage might of atomic power". The narrator hypothesizes that this "sentinel" was left on the moon as a "warning beacon" for possible intelligent and spacefaring species that might develop on Earth.


In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the operation of the sentinel is activated when sunlight touches it for the first time after it was dug up.




You can read it online here.


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