The Champion expedition discovers that Mars is inhabited and locates a survivor of the lost Envoy, transforming a search for a missing spacecraft into first contact with another civilization. Its three stark radio dispatches move from apparent confirmation of total loss, to the revelation of Martian inhabitants, to the correction that one person has survived.

Causes and Background

Six years after the Envoy went silent, the drone Zombie had already photographed what appeared to be ruins and engineering works on Mars. A major human expedition was delayed by World War III. The eventual mission was therefore not simply a prompt response to the first signs of civilization: it followed years of silence and war, and was mounted with greater strength and safety than the failed Envoy voyage.

The Expedition and Its Discovery

The Federation ship Champion crossed under Lyle Drive in nineteen days. Its all-male crew included eighteen experienced spacemen, accompanied by more than eighteen male pioneers. Captain van Tromp landed just south of Lacus Soli, intending to search for the Envoy. Unlike the first expedition, the Champion sent daily radio reports to Earth, making its discoveries public as they unfolded.

The first dispatch reported the Envoy located and no survivors. The next overturned the familiar picture of Mars as an empty, ruined world: Mars was inhabited. Then came a correction to the earlier report, announcing that one Envoy survivor had been found. The dispatch sequence preserves the expedition’s abrupt reversals—wreckage and presumed death, evidence of life on Mars, and finally a human survivor—without identifying that survivor in the reports themselves.

Consequences and Significance

The discovery establishes that Mars is not merely an environment explored by humans but a world with inhabitants. Finding the Envoy survivor also gives the expedition a human rescue mission alongside its unprecedented encounter with Martian life. The daily radio dispatches turn these findings into successive public revelations, while their corrections show how quickly certainty gives way to new evidence. Together, the reports set the conditions for the survivor’s return to Earth and the story that follows.