The now 50‑year‑old Scientific Boys Club decides to build a ship that will sail to Mars along the “Ethereal Current,” a concept developed in a thesis by the wife of one of its members that claims the universe is flooded with Ethereal energy. During this voyage the club aims to prove an old theory that channels on Mars were constructed by Martians, but they find no life on the planet. Many years later, when both the Ethereal Current and the Martian channel theories are dismissed as nonsense, a Mars expedition discovers a stone inscribed “Scientific Boys Club 1954.”