Offworld

by Robin Parrish

  So far he seemed to be. The youngest member of the crew at twenty-four, Terry Kessler played the role of little brother. Diminutive and squirrelly, with the build of a horse-racing jockey, he operated almost entirely on instinct in the cockpit, and in life. Terry was a gifted pilot and confident in his abilities.

  His job among the crew had been to pilot the two specialized vehicles carried aboard the Ares that were intended for use on Mars-one being the Martian lander that detached from the Ares and carried all of the materials that would be needed there, the other the six-wheeled surface rover. He used the lander to make periodic supply runs back up to the orbiting Ares so that the crew had all the food, water, fuel, and other supplies they would need for an extended stay. He also had a natural clumsiness on his feet and an unerring ability to say the wrong thing at the worst time.

  Trisha knew it was Terry who would be the least prepared to face what seemed to he happening. If any of them were actually capable of processing it.

  "This isn't ..." Terry faltered. "I mean ... everybody's going to jump out and yell `gotcha' or something, right? This is not really happening. Is it?"

  "I don't know" was the only real, only honest reply she could offer.

  "It's just .... Terry said, "this is so ... I mean, it's got to be some kind of ..."

  Trisha decided that all she could do was return to what she knew.

  Focus. just focus on the work. And get Terry focused on it too.

  "Let's start simple," Trisha suggested. "We need to know how widespread this is. Have they evacuated from this area alone? Is it bigger? All of Florida? Even farther? I want you to see who you can reach. Cast a wide net-try for military installations, weather stations, police radio, truck drivers, HAM operators. Even foreign governments. Just talk to somebody. I don't care who."

  Terry nodded and made his way to the communications station. Trisha watched him. He was extremely unnerved by the idea of coming home to the absence of a welcoming party, but she could see him compartmentalizing it, just as she had. Just as all four of them would have to.

  Training always took over in high-stress situations. She wondered how long those reflexes would last.

  `Any particular frequency?" he asked.

  She cast him a glance, dead serious. All of them."

  When he turned to the radio without comment, she visited various workstations around the room, doing routine checks on the status of the complex, what was left of their ship, and Mission Control's records. She stood and craned her neck to see out the big rear windows to Launch Pads 39A and 39B three miles in the distance. Launch Pad 39B was currently home to Athena, Ares' sister ship, which was scheduled to launch the second manned mission to Mars just days after the Ares returned. They would pick up where the Ares crew had left off, using the same ground habitat as core components that they would add to. The large ship and its booster rockets appeared more or less ready for launch, but where were her ground engineers and crew?

  After a few moments of working in silence, Terry spoke again. "Trish?"

  "Yeah?"

  "What if everyone's gone? I mean ... like everyone? What if there's nobody but us?"

  "That's impossible," she said, then hesitated. Was itpossible that all of NASA could just disappear? "We just need to figure out what happened and why. And how."

  "But what if they're all dead? Like, what if everybody was wiped out by some kind of fast-acting super virus, like in The Stand?"

  "Then there would be bodies everywhere, wouldn't there?"

  "Or what if they didn't go?" Terry wondered. "What if they were taken against their will? What if ... what if it was some kind of invasion?"

  "I don't recall seeing any little green men on Mars," Trisha replied.

  "But what if-?"

  "Terry," Trisha said, stopping him.

  "I know, I know," he said, his shoulders slumping. "Focus. Do the job. One step at a time."

  "I have people I've been waiting a long time to see too," said Trisha. "We all do. Friends, family. For right now, we know only that Kennedy has been evacuated. Guessing and worrying will only make us crazy. We're going to put aside our fears, and we're going to figure this out. Okay?"

  "Okay," he sighed. "But I'm getting nowhere with this radio. Dead silence on every channel."

  Trisha frowned. `All that tells us is that no one's using their radios. Or maybe the ones at Kennedy are all broken. Hmm," she said, moving to another workstation. "I wonder if I can bring up some satellite images. Who knows, maybe they had to evacuate the base due to a hurricane."

  "In early July?" called out Owen's booming voice. Trisha turned to see him and Chris descending the stairs at the back of the room. They both looked as worn and battered as she and Terry did, but at least Chris' color had returned. "Hurricane season is still a few months off," Owen added.

  `And I don't see any clouds," Terry said, turning to face the bright, translucent windows.

  "Chris, are you okay?" Trisha asked.

  "Super," he replied. "What have you learned?"

  "If anybody's out there, they're not feeling chatty," said Terry.

  "I can also confirm," Trisha reported, "that it was the Ground Landing System that guided the Ares to Kennedy. Looks like a few upgrades to the system were made while we were away. It saved our lives."

  "So there's no one on the island, and we can't communicate with the outside world," said Chris, referring to the fact that Kennedy Space Center was completely isolated on an island separate from the Florida mainland. "What about the security video?"

  `Just about to take a look," Trisha replied.

  All right, pull that up and I'll be right back."

  Trisha watched him turn to go. "You sure you're okay?"

  `Just need to hit the head," he answered. "Haven't been since we smelled pavement."

  Truthfully, Chris did need to visit the bathroom, but he also wanted a minute to himself.

  How could any of this be real? How could this be happening to the four of them, of all people? Two and a half years alone with no one but each other for company, and they finally get home ... to be stuck in the same situation.

  I was off the hook. No more team leader. It was done. It was over.

  Okay, Chris. Get it together

  No time for rest. No relief. Not yet.

  Game on. Again.

  He detoured to a sink, ran cold water, taking time to splash it on his face. It felt good, nice and cool, a contrast to the bruises that colored his still-dirty visage. He couldn't let the others see him tired and hesitant.

  He leaned over and splashed water once more, then looked in the mirror.

  It was right behind him. A swirling black mass. A deep, dark abyss from which no light entered or escaped.

  It was the same thing he'd seen when the Ares went dark above the Earth and entered its descent. This thing had been just beyond the nose of the ship the first time he saw it. Here in this bathroom it was huge, right behind him in the mirror's reflection, obscuring his view of the entire room.

  Chris was unable to move at the sight of it.

  What was it? And was he the only one seeing it?

  He spun around.

  The stark dividers of the restroom stalls were right where they were supposed to be. The swirling mass-that blue-black void-was gone.

  His heart protested against his rib cage. His palms were clammy, and a trickle of cold sweat slowly skimmed down his back.

  What was happening to him? Was this what it felt like to lose one's mind?

  "Chris, take a look," Terry called out as Chris reentered the Firing Room. He was standing over a console, Owen doing the same. Trisha sat in front of it, staring at the screen.

  "Found something?"

  Trisha nodded from the console where she sat, and he noticed for the first time how she looked. Aside from the bumps and scrapes, the dark circles under her eyes were painfully obvious. She sat hunched over, neck and back knotted in tension. He stepped into their little circle and pla
ced a hand on her shoulder, and at his touch she forced herself to relax. It was a subtle signal that had developed during their mission, a quiet reminder from him to her. Relaxing her muscles didn't come naturally and required focus and concentration on her part to make happen.

  "We can only access the last three months of security feeds from here," Trisha explained. "Everything before that has been archived. But it looks like what we have is more than enough. Watch."

  She keyed in a sequence of strokes on the keyboard and the monitor came to life. A view of the hallway just outside the Firing Room was displayed, with people coming and going in both directions. There was nothing remarkable about it at all.

  Chris blinked when every person on the screen vanished.

  Trisha froze the tape-now showing a barren hallway-and swiveled in her chair. Her eyebrows popped up.

  "Again," he said, and nodded at the screen.

  She rewound and played the footage one more time. Just as before, the busy hallway full of NASA employees became instantaneously empty. All dozen or so of the people in the video frame disappeared like a camera trick, leaving nothing behind, not a watch, a shoe, nothing.

  "Can you verify that this tape hasn't been tampered with?" he asked.

  Already done," said Owen, who was bending over an adjacent terminal. "Look at the time stamp on the tape. There's no footage missing. It advances frame by frame just as it should, but one second everyone's there, and the next the place is empty."

  "Plus," Terry pointed out, "look at the time and date. This footage is from sixty-seven days ago. A little over two months. That's the exact same day we lost contact with Houston."

  Chris stood up to his full height, his mind spinning fast. "Two months they've been gone ..

  "It gets worse," said Owen. He was seated at another station to their right. The three of them quickly joined him. "I found a particularly helpful satellite that's maintaining a geosynchronous orbit over North America. It's quite an advanced piece of technology-looks like it was launched while we were gone-and it can zoom in or out to incredible levels of detail. Not just down to the city or street level, but to ground level itself"

  While Owen spoke, his fingers whispered to the keys and the view shown on his screen zoomed in and out as he explained, finally panning out to a wide view of the Florida peninsula. "I've scanned random points throughout the U.S.-Orlando, Atlanta, D.C., Boston, Dallas, St. Louis, Vegas, San Diego, even my hometown-and there's no movement of any kind. No people out and about, no vehicles in motion, nothing."

  "What about outside the U.S.?"

  "I haven't checked that yet," said Owen, "but I'd be willing to bet we'll find the same thing. And there's something else, Chris. Something you're not going to believe. Watch closely. This is a live view."

  "I don't see anything," said Chris, leaning in to peer at the screen.

  "Not yet," replied Owen. "Wait for it."

  With that, he directed the satellite camera to pan back farther and farther until the entire southeastern seaboard was visible, from Virginia all the way to Texas.

  "What's that?" asked Trisha. Burke saw it too.

  Owen merely shook his head.

  In southeastern Texas, a brilliant white light was shining. It was gigantic in size, nearly as bright as the sun at its center, and giving off enough radiance to obscure much of the surrounding area. It was like staring directly into the sun through a pinhole, and Chris found it almost painful to his eyes.

  Any light emanating from the planet's surface, big and bright enough to be seen from space, with this kind of intensity, was ... Well, it was something no one had ever witnessed before.

  "Is that ... ? It almost looks like it's coming from Houston. Maybe even Johnson."

  "It does look that way," said Owen. "The light is so bright and giving off so much radiance, it's obscuring a lot of the map. I can't tell you exactly where it's centered."

  `And you said this is a live view?" he asked.

  "Yes," Owen replied. "I've searched the rest of the satellite's viewing range and can't find anything else like it."

  Chris stood, crossing his arms and letting out a slow breath. `All right. Let's work one problem at a time. Cross-reference the time stamp on that video with at least two more security feeds, and if they match up-if everyone on every video disappears at the same time-then we have a starting point."

  Terry went to another station to track down one of the two videos Chris requested, while Trisha returned to her screen to find the third.

  "Beech, see how many other satellite feeds you can tap into with views of Asia or Africa or Europe. We need to know if this is a worldwide phenomenon, or if it's localized to the U.S. And I want to know if there are any more lights like this thing in Houston."

  Trisha and Terry's task took only a few minutes. Both were able to verify the data from the first tape, with more people spontaneously disappearing throughout Kennedy Space Center at precisely the same time stamp as the video they already had. Owen worked equally fast, producing live satellite imagery of numerous locations around the world, all confirming the worst.

  The light in Houston was the only one of its kind.

  And the planet was empty.

  The silence they were left with was empty and enormous. What words could possibly make sense of what they'd discovered? Terry looked from face to face, but the others were all lost in their own thoughts.

  "How could something like this happen?" he finally asked.

  Chris crossed his arms, thinking fast and making decisions on the spot. It was how he operated, always. "Listen," he said in a tone that let them know he was about to give orders. Everyone turned in his direction. "We have to figure out what's taken place here. I know that. But first things first. It's going to be dark in a few hours. We've all got injuries from the crash and we're exhausted. Our time in space has left us with decreased body mass and reduced immune systems. So we're going to report to medical, patch each other up, and then try to catch some sleep, or some rest at the very least. Then well take a look around the rest of the base, search for clues, and figure out what to do next."

  Everyone stood.

  "As much as I hate stating the obvious ... I feel someone should say it aloud, to mark the moment," Owen said, stepping closer to Chris but speaking to everyone. "Two months ago, every living person on this planet disappeared. Instantaneously. Simultaneously. And from the looks of it, very likely unwillingly."

  "We know the when," Chris agreed. "Now we need to figure out how. And why."

  JULY 5, 2033 DAY ONE

  Only Owen managed to fall asleep that night. Bright and early the next morning he volunteered to scour the Administration Building for clues, while Chris decided to poke around the enormous Vehicle Assembly Building, Terry reconned Security HQ, and Trisha drove over to the Visitor's Center at the outer edge of the complex.

  Two years had clone practically nothing to change the Administration Building; it was exactly how Owen remembered it. On the top floor he found the door to the director's office unlocked, as it must've been when everyone disappeared. The wide room was covered floor to ceiling with fake wood paneling and still carried the faint smell of the director's favorite brand of cigar. A large window offered a view of the support and operations grounds. Far off in the distance and to the west, Owen could see the faint plume of black smoke rising from what was left of the Ares, still smoldering.

  He didn't waste time looking for anything that might prove helpful. He already knew he would find nothing of the sort here. Instead, he sat behind the director's desk, pulled out the shallow center drawer containing pens and paper clips, and set it aside. He reached a hand into the space where the drawer had been and retrieved something that was attached to the underside of the desk.

  It was a manila folder, bright red in color, and it was sealed. It was not labeled with words or images on its outside. It was hefty in weight, filled with more than a hundred loose pages and bound with a rubber band.

  R
ather than open the red folder and examine its contents, Owen located the director's cigar lighter inside another drawer and lit the folder on fire. Once it was successfully burning, he tossed the folder into a metal trash can beside the director's desk, watching it until only ash remained.

  Once the last ember was out, he rose from the desk and left to report back to the others that the Administration Building had proven useless.

  Late that afternoon, their investigations complete, the four astronauts gathered at a table in the central outdoor court at the Visitor's Center. In the parking lot to the south sat hundreds of cars. All of them abandoned. This was normally the busiest area at Kennedy, but now the place was deathly silent save for the occasional trace of wind. It was an odd sensation, a silence that went deeper than auditory. It was like an infection in the air they breathed, as if everything was familiar and yet completely alien and very wrong.

  As it often did in Florida, clouds built up quickly as the four of them sat contemplating their next move. The light gray haze obscured the sun and threatened to drown their already dismal moods.

  Chris salvaged something from a backpack he carried and placed it in the center of the table. It was a matted frame, with three large, rectangular portrait holes side by side. The first two holes contained front pages of local newspapers; the third was empty. The major news organizations had stopped printing on paper over a decade ago, but it wasn't uncommon for small-town trades to still run presses daily.

  The first newspaper was dated February 15, 2031, the date the Ares was launched, with a picture of the rocket and its boosters lifting off amid a plume of smoke and fire. It bore the headline, Humanity's Longest Stride.

  The second paper, in the center of the frame, boasted a gigantic headline in a thick font that read, MAN WALKS ONMARS. It was dated August 30, 2031, and contained a large picture of Chris in his heavy space suit, placing an American flag on red Martian soil.

  "Found this at VAB," Chris explained. VAB stood for Vehicle Assembly Building, the largest structure in the complex, capable of housing an entire spacecraft and its massive rocket boosters. "Looks like one of the engineers made it. Guess he was saving the third panel for our return."