Mars Maze (Short Story)

by Deborah Jackson

  Episode 2

  Okay, there had to be a way to do this. Crouch, spring, fly.

  Up Sarah sailed, into the vast red-tinged sky, heading for the lip of the canyon. Except, the wind decided at that instant to careen through the inlets and outlets of the maze and send her crashing back to the bottom of the gully.

  “Not fair,” she yelled at the gritty air, shaking her fist.

  “Ahhh,” she heard someone moan inside her helmet. It could only be Matt.

  “Matt? Are you there? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m here, wherever here is. And no, I’m not okay.”

  “Where are you? I’ll try to find you.”

  “Don’t know. Ahhh,” he groaned again.

  “Stay still. I know what to do. I’ll just follow the sound . . . of your voice.”

  “Uh huh,” said Matt. Despite the edge of pain in his voice, there was an audible smirk too.

  Sarah waited for the wind to abate, somewhat. Then she crouched and sprang again. This time she reached the top of the canyon and grabbed for some rocks with her marshmallow gloves.

  “Can you hear me, Sarah? Is my voice getting any louder?”

  “Cut it out,” she snapped, grappling and managing to scramble over the edge. Of course she heard him through some sort of radio system in her EMU suit, so his voice would stay at exactly the same volume, unless she cranked it higher. And she knew she’d given him more ammunition to tease her the minute she’d said it.

  She bounced to her feet, nearly tipped back down, then shot out her arms to maintain some sort of Michelin Man balance. Now, to look for Matt. There was a thin haze in the air, almost like fog, and she couldn’t see more than a metre to either side. Cautiously, she tramped forward, sending puffs of red dust into the air.

  “I knew this was a mistake,” she hissed under her breath. Even under her breath was loud enough to carry through the radio, though.

  “Don’t you think you’re jumping the gun,” said Matt. “I may be in pain, but . . . we’re on Mars.”

  “Why is there fog, then?” She shuffled another two exaggerated steps.

  “Oh, um, not sure. I thought I read something about water vapour in these canyons. They might have been old river beds.”

  “It’s creepy.”

  Matt actually laughed. “Come on. It’s not like it’s a swamp, with snakes or alligators. It’s not like there are vampires.”

  “How can you be so sure? If we’re in another universe . . .”

  “Some things may be different.” He sucked in his breath. “Sorry, just tried to move my leg.”

  “D’you think it’s broken?”

  “Nah,” he said. “Just a little banged up. Anyway, like I was saying, different, but not horror story different.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Sarah took another step. “What if the horror stories are based on something real? What if they came from people who’d travelled to other universes?”

  “Now you’re just being ridiculous.”

  “Now I’m taking logic one step further. We now know there are a lot more places to go than our own planet, or solar system, or universe. We could have made up legends because of our wild dreams and imaginations, but they could also be based on someone’s real experience.”

  “Just keep following my voice,” said Matt. He was so infuriating sometimes, not only dismissing her theory without even a discussion, but returning right back to her original blunder.

  “I’m not stupid.” She slammed her foot down and the impact rippled through her. This low gravity was becoming a nightmare.

  “Never said you were. Smartest person I know. Just sometimes you get freaked out over nothing.”

  “I don’t get freaked— Ahhhhhhh!” She tripped over a mound of . . . something and pounded into the ground.

  “Sarah?”

  “It’s okay. I’m okay.” She placed a hand over her fibrillating heart and looked back. The mist swept over the mound of human proportions. “I just tripped over you, I think.”

  “Hmm,” said Matt. “Didn’t see you. Didn’t feel you. Don’t think it was me.”

  Sarah’s hair had fallen in front of her face. She raised her hand to sweep it back, and thwacked her fingers against the miserable helmet. This was becoming frustrating. But at least it made her focus on getting the hair out of her eyes by tilting her head back and shaking it, rather than thinking too much about what Matt had said.

  The strands fell away. The mist faded to curling white wisps. The mound on the ground became clearer.

  It looked like a body in a suit, only the suit was bluish in colour instead of marble white, and the helmet was cracked, and the body inside wasn’t a body at all, but an explosion of flesh and gristle.

  Sarah began to scream.

  “What? What? What?”

  She couldn’t stop.

  “Calm down, Sarah. You’ve seen all kinds of bad things. You’ve even tricked a Nazi, survived snakes and scorpions in the desert. You can deal with this.”

  Sarah stopped screaming.

  “What is it? Is it Nadine?”

  “N-not f-funny,” she said, but she couldn’t contain a chuckle. How did he do it? How did he make her laugh when she was facing a scene from Alien?

  “It’s a body,” she finally answered. “Not you, but similar.”

  “I take it that was an unkind comparison.”

  “It’s exploded, inside a suit, but the helmet is cracked open. There’s no face, just . . . pulp.”

  “Very unkind comparison.”

  “Matt, I—”

  “Once again, this is Mars. Accidents can happen, and, you said it before, our blood will boil because of the thin atmosphere if we don’t have the pressurized suits. Poor guy. You don’t think—” His voice cracked. “Could it be my dad?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I mean, I don’t really know, but I don’t think so.” How could she know?

  “Could it be Nadine?” He didn’t sound quite as horrified.

  “Seriously, Matt. I don’t know.” She inched closer, creeping over the pebbly surface, mist and red dust swirling around, blocking her view, then bringing her suddenly right beside the body, like a zoom lens projecting her in an instant somewhere she’d rather not be, ever.

  The crinkly space suit seemed odd—not NASA-like at all. The helmet was rimed with frost and the interior becoming crystallized mush. A strange colour, though. Not red like blood or settled Martian dust, not green, definitely not green, but a pearly white colour. What looked like bone or cartilage, even a nose, projected from the middle, but it— Her heart skipped a beat. It seemed to be moving.

  “Matt! It doesn’t look alive, but something is moving.” The nose-thing fragmented and fell to the side.

  She jumped back and back, swinging her arms to try to keep her balance. Suddenly she was slipping over the edge of another canyon, or some deep void into the black hole of this red planet. She plunged downward, flinging her hands forward, until . . . some metres down, she managed to grasp the side. There she clung, arms quivering from the strain, tears streaming from the terror.

  She looked below, but there was only mist. She looked beside and there was another body on a ledge. Would it be milky and messed-up too? Would it start falling apart in front of her?

  “Sarah,” said Matt. “I see you.”

  Or was it Matt?

  “Hang on. I cracked my knee on the ground, and my elbow and my head, but I think I can get to you.”

  Her arms were vibrating like plucked guitar strings; she could feel her fingers slipping.

  Matt crawled toward her; he shuffled along the ledge; he reached for her hands.

  “Gottcha,” he said, grabbing her plump gloved hands in his plump gloved hands. “Hey,” he grunted. “That’s interesting.”

  “I don’t care . . . what’s interesting,” she said between gasps. “Just pull me up.”

  “No,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I think I’l
l let you go.”

  And he did.

  “I’m going to kill— Oh.” Her feet struck, no touched, solid ground. She looked up at him. She knew he was grinning. She would have punched in his helmet if she didn’t already know what would happen if she did.

  “I couldn’t see, because of the mist.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said.