The Red Planet has been settled for decades, but Mars still keeps its secrets. When Dr. John Daly unearths an ancient artifact beneath the Martian sands, he stumbles onto something far more dangerous than empty canals and dust storms: a relic from a civilization that made humanity look primitive. What begins as a scientific curiosity spirals into a nightmare of competing factions, each desperate to control what the artifact reveals about the Martians who came before. The technology is staggering. The history is damning. And the question that haunts every character who learns the truth is simple: did the Martians destroy themselves, and if so, what does that mean for the humans who followed? This is Cold War-era SF at its most paranoid and propulsive, exploring how the impulse to conquer mirrors the impulse to annihilate.
