Mars Maze (Short Story)

by Deborah Jackson

  Episode 4

  Now what? Matt had just touched what might be suit-devouring, flesh-eating bacteria. In order to escape this planet, they’d have to wait for the time machine’s failsafe to activate and pull them back home. But what if the suits dissolved in the next few seconds and they couldn’t breathe and their blood began boiling?

  “Matt, we’re going to end up like that fish-man,” said Sarah.

  “No,” he stated, although his eyes seemed fixated on the disintegrating patch of fabric on his EMU suit. He was gazing at where he’d touched hers, too. “It won’t get through the Kevlar.”

  “Kevlar?” Now what was he talking about?

  “The same thing they use to make bulletproof vests. It’s what one of the layers of our suits is made of, to keep micrometeorites from getting through and making us lose pressure. We’ll be okay.”

  “How can you be so sure? We don’t know what that stuff can do?” She pointed to the turquoise residue, her heart thumping like a chest-rattling drum solo.

  “You’re right,” said Matt, crouching down suddenly and wiping the residue on the Mars dirt. Nothing came off. The dirt just clung to the substance, like sprinkles on a jelly donut. Something was glittering now, too, as if the residue had eaten away to the Kevlar layer. He sprang up, shook his hand in disgust, and snapped, “I think we should get moving.”

  “Moving where? We can’t even think of rescuing your dad if we end up like him.” She hated looking at him, so she pointed blindly.

  Matt grasped her hand with his undamaged glove and moved it directly over the body. “Him, you mean?”

  “You’re joking? We’re this close to becoming pulp and you’re playing the comedian?”

  “Where we should go,” he said, ignoring her, “is the same place he came from. His ship. Because it’s bound to be pressurized and then we might survive if this stuff dissolves our suits.”

  “What if it’s an aquarium?” she shot back.

  He shrugged. “Then we make a choice. Explode or drown.”

  “Very nice. This is just great. You know, we’ve faced pretty dangerous situations before, but we could always breathe.”

  “I thought you were good at holding your breath,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her along the side of the canyon in a direction the astronaut might have come from. A canyon that was becoming so deep and wide, they couldn’t see the bottom or the other side, even when the dust clouds subsided or the fog dissipated briefly. “Especially that day in the river when you saved my life.”

  “Holding your breath for a minute or two is a little different from what could be hours. And we’re not supposed to hold our breath on Mars, I think.”

  “Why?”

  “It has something to do with our lungs and exploding.”

  “Oh, you’re right. I read about that somewhere. The pressure is so thin here, it would make our lungs expand too quickly and pop if we didn’t breathe out. Of course there’s too much carbon dioxide and not enough oxygen so we wouldn’t be able to breathe anyway.”

  They walked for a while, or rather, bounded, without another word, their breathing the only sound chuffing through the radio. The wind swirled and whipped around them, over them, but most of the time, ploughed directly into them, forcing them to bound backward occasionally, too. Sarah tried not to look at the widening circle on her arm, the retreating fibres, the impenetrable Kevlar that was becoming penetrable. She tried not to look at the canyon, that seemed deeper and blacker than the Mammoth caves, and where they could be blown into in an instant if the wind decided to change direction. But most of all, she tried not to look at Matt, because he made her mad, and he would probably die first, too.

  Then she saw a spark on the horizon. The red dust dwindled to fine curling filaments that allowed for actual sight. An enormous mountain loomed over the dark cracks in the surface of the planet—the canyon maze. More sparks flew into the air and the ground beneath them shook, a series of convulsions that threw them off their feet.

  “What? What?” she shrieked.

  “A-rsia M-mons,” said Matt, his voice stuttering with the vibrations. “The volcano.”

  Okay, this wasn’t a time to get mad. This was a time to stay calm and focused and figure out how to survive. Sarah took a deep breath. “Of all the stupid, pig-headed, idiotic ideas in all the world! Let’s go find my dad on Mars. We just need a couple of suits (which we had to steal from NASA!), we don’t have to worry about life or anything, it’s a dead planet, and there are certainly no active volcanoes!”

  “Sarah, stop.”

  “What are we going to do now, Matt? Huh? Huh? Huh? What if lava and ash rain down on us? Do you think the Kevlar can stand up to that? Are we going to end up frozen mummies covered with ash just like at Mount Vesuvius? Or do you think this bacteria, or whatever it is, is going to eat us first?”

  “Sarah, you’re becoming hysterical.”

  “Hysterical? I’m becoming hysterical. Who wouldn’t be hysterical in all of this? I don’t want to ever listen to you again.”

  “Sarah, listen to me.” He grabbed her by the shoulders.

  “Okay,” she huffed. “I’ll listen one more time, because we probably only have minutes or seconds to live and the last thing I want to hear is you reassuring me we’re going to be fine.”

  “We’re going to be fine. And if we were going to die, the last thing I’d want to hear is your voice anyway.”

  Sarah sighed. Should she shake him now or try to kiss him through the double shields of their helmets?

  “Stop being nice,” she whispered. “How are we going to be fine?”

  He turned her around and to the side of the volcano a glittering concoction of glass and steel confronted her eyes. A dome that was protection from the atmosphere and might be protection from an erupting volcano.

  “The fish-people have been busy,” said Matt.