MARS: VISIT TO A SMALLER PLANET

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On the night of the Fourth, when we landed on Mars, I walk the beach and watch the fireworks compete with the stars in the enormous black sky. This is Independence Day, and I am alone. So are we all. This is what we discover at times like these--the first flight around the moon, the moon walk, the probe of Jupiter, the Viking missions, and now this amazing, take-your-breath-away event. Errands into space lift us out of ourselves and return us to ourselves. They tell us that we are alone in the universe, and how terrible and wonderful an idea that is.

Mars, of course, has offered the perpetual test of human uniqueness, and has lately become the proof. If life existed anywhere else under the sun, it should have been there. We have always given most-favored-planet status to Mars. How would you describe an elephant to a man from Mars? If a man from Mars were to visit Earth...? And so forth. Orson Welles broadcast bulletins of our scariest Martians; Ray Walston played our favorite.

Imagination was abetted by science. If life could evolve on little old Earth, why not on another planet in the same solar system, one that was a mere seven-months' flight away? Mars had a warm, dense atmosphere, water, floodplains. Last August brought news of a meteorite, most likely from Mars, containing minerals and other evidence of a long-past microbial life; a thrill was felt around the world.

Tonight the thrill is greater. Earlier in the day, a rocket ship dropped a cluster of airbags into the flood delta of a valley called Ares, and all the Main Street parades and the hot dog cookouts and three-legged races stopped cold. Five hours later, televised pictures emerged depicting a rust-colored desert with rust-colored rocks and a distant hill against a gray-brown sky. The scenery was boring, the excitement overwhelming. People on TV spoke of how great and adventurous America is, how like a Pathfinder--a nation of explorers and pioneers. But the feeling of the moment went way beyond July 4 flag waving. Here was Earth's dominant species sailing out into the wilderness again, and what did it discover? Itself, again.

The beach I walk is like most others. The waves churn up the sounds of eternity; the sand speaks of ephemera and decay. I see all the usual symbols and have all the usual reactions. According to Nevil Shute, we were destined to destroy ourselves and wind up On the Beach, and may yet. The possibility seems remote tonight. This is more like Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," on which the occurrence of an earth-jolting discovery awakens thoughts of self-examination, self-location, a touch of resolve.

What should one do with the knowledge that we are alone in the universe? In a lovely piece in the New York Times, John Noble Wilford cited with some melancholy our "cosmic loneliness." One could go anywhere with that daunting thought. We could conclude that we humans are a special breed, appointed by universal forces to planet-hop and rule. It would be like us to think that--every dead brown rock on every dead brown planet serving to exalt our life by contrast. We are the fireworks in the darkened universe, the Chinese firecrackers, the Roman candles and the sparklers. In a few short decades we may be spread out as settlers on various globes under the stars, calling out Tarzan yells to farther galaxies--kings of the brown hills.