Adam was happy that the miner had quit babbling at him. He had ignored the marker buoys that warned him that he was entering a registered claim, and the miner quoting her rights under the mining laws was kind of like being threatened by a book-keeper. What was she going to do? Strangle him with her hotwire cutting tool? He shook his head and laughed when his sensors warned him he was being followed by the miner’s sled. Her voice came over the com again and he rolled his eyes.
“You are giving me no choice but to defend my claim,” said the woman.
Adam ignored the miner; after all he wasn’t here to steal her ice. He dismissed her as harmless, right up until the moment his computer blared out a loud warning, and red lights flashed. She had locked some kind of weapon on him! He swore a long string of epithets. His fingers flew over the controls, but he was far too late to initiate evasive maneuvers. She had opened fire.
Two, four, then eight, then all sixteen thrusters were blasted off of his sled with a barrage of laser fire. She fired first on the main thrusters, then destroyed his guidance and stabilizing thrusters. He had no control whatsoever. He could move up and down, but not much. And he could no longer go fast by any stretch of the imagination. His sled slowed to a stop, but still aloft, just floated above the ground. One last light blossomed red on his sled. The computer then reported that the airlock had been welded shut with a laser blast. He could see as the woman’s sled circled his once before feeling a tremor as her magnetic tow line attached to his aft hull. She was dragging him back the way she had come. His computer picked up her transmission to the Atmobase, reporting the illegal invasion of her claim and the legal, yet merciful, actions she had taken to stop the incursion. Atmobase acknowledged her report and asked when they could expect her to bring the criminal in for punishment. She informed them it would be a couple days while she finished assembling her load, and then she would be towing both in behind her. Adam growled and then screamed at the woman. Either she didn’t hear him or she just ignored him.
Kayla had expected some kind of commentary or communication to come over the com unit, but her intruder had remained silent. She shrugged, and anchored the offending vehicle to the conglomerate. It was fine with her if the occupant wished to remain silent, but whoever they were, they would have to wait until she was back on board her sled if they decided they wanted to talk, because she was not going to establish a link to her headset. She stepped out of her airlock, laser in hand, and got back to work. She guessed that she could probably get another four tons onto the conglomerate before nightfall.
The whole set of recent events set Kayla on edge. She kept expecting the claim jumper to have some kind of partner who would come looking for him. As a result, she kept catching herself jumping at shadows and looking over her shoulder. She decided that she was going to be relieved to get that jumper back to the law so her life could resume its calm and peaceful rhythm. However, her hyper-vigilance and mild paranoia paid off. Near the end of the day, as the light was just beginning to fade, she caught her breath in her throat, when, while checking her gravity nets, she noticed a pair of booted feet moving carefully and quietly along the other side of her conglomerate. She forced her heart to slow down and, pushing the panic out of her mind, considered the situation logically. The conglomerate was massive, so she had a couple of seconds to compose herself. She had her laser, but she was not prepared to kill someone. Then she got an idea.
Studying the shuttle’s specifications took all afternoon. To his delight, Adam discovered a dual-purpose maintenance/escape hatch in the belly of the sled. There was no airlock there, so he had to slip into his pressure suit and, once the hatch was open, released his sled’s pressurized atmosphere out into the planet’s thinner, colder environment. Given enough time with the hatch closed the sled would automatically balance the internal atmosphere. Adam did not care though. He had no intention of returning to his crippled sled. If he was careful, he could get the drop on the miner, immobilize her, and steal her sled to finish his work. He smiled to himself as he slid around the huge chunk of ice. Adam had seen her working on the far side and he relished the idea of thumping her upside her head with the large metal tool he had found in his sled. Everything was going perfectly, until he heard a strange noise. At first he had a hard time pinpointing where it was coming from. Then he looked up.
Kayla floated, a little unsteadily, above the conglomerate, one antigravity net on each boot. In anticipation of the man’s attack, she had used the laser to cut at an angle through one lobe of the conglomerate. The lobe slid smoothly off of the conglomerate and fell on top of the claim jumper. A satisfying scream escaped his lips followed by the thud of a muffled impact. Kayla adjusted the power to the webs on her feet and wobbled as she settled to the ground. Two minutes later, the webs off, she peered down at her would-be assailant. A three-foot long torque handle rested on the ice not far from where he lay, pinned and unconscious. She moved the makeshift weapon out of his reach and pondered for a moment what to do with the stranger, then decided she needed a few more answers. The weight of the ice was enough to keep him pinned even in Mars’ lower gravity, so she went to inspect his sled to see how he had gotten out.
Finding the hatch was easy; he had left it open. In a minute she was up and inside of his sled looking for a clue to his identity. The sled was a rental. With a smile, she hoped he had opted to get full coverage insurance. She made a quick search of the sled and saw there were not a lot of places to hide things. She found an emergency re-breather, a feature of newer sleds than hers, which gave her an idea. She made note that the ration packs were still mostly full and the water supply was adequate. She was running a diagnostic on the interior environmental controls to be sure they were in good working order when the communication system registered an incoming call. This was a good chance to figure out who this guy was. She pushed the button.
“Adam!” said a man’s voice. “Where the hell have you been? What’s your status?”
“Adam’s not in at the moment,” said Kayla. “I can take a message though.”
“What?!” The man sounded surprised. “Who is this?”
“Me?” said Kayla innocently. “I’m nobody.”
“Where is Adam? What’s happened? Where is that … that….”
Kayla laughed at the man’s frustration and decided to play on his emotions. “I suppose you could say that Adam and I are a little involved.” She waited an instant for this to register before adding, “And by the way, who is this?” Kayla could hear the audible groan over the line and giggled.
“Why doesn’t it surprise me?” he asked himself. “I don’t know why I keep hiring him. What an ass!”
“With that I’d have to agree.” Kayla said as she thought to herself. This guy can’t be all bad since we both sincerely dislike this Adam guy. “So, can I help?”
“Not unless you have a recently fallen meteorite laying around.” The man’s sarcasm grated on Kayla, but curiosity overruled her irritation.
“As a matter of fact, I do. What’s your interest in it?”
“You have it?! That’s fabulous. What luck!” The man’s frustration disappeared. “Uh, but where is Adam?”
“Adam ran into a bit of trouble,” said Kayla. “You could say that he’s on ice for the time being. I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.” The man sighed heavily.
“I’m Robert,” he replied. “Are you interested in the fee I’m offering for the meteorite? If Adam is out of the picture, I’d be willing to deal with you.”
“What do you want it for … and how much are you offering?”
“Research,” said Robert flatly. “I’m a scientist and I’m offering ten thousand dollars for the recovery and delivery of the intact meteorite. It’s what I offered Adam, but if you can deliver it then it’s yours.” Kayla was impressed. That would cover a lot of her excavation costs.
“I think I can manage that,” said Kayla. “But don’t expect me to deliver it in person.” Transporting it herself would c
ost her transportation fees, time away from her claim. Besides, she didn’t exactly feel safe going off planet to deal with a stranger. “I’ll send it through the secure interplanetary delivery system in a couple days. I’ll transmit you an image of the meteorite and the tracking codes so you can follow its progress.”
“Sounds fair,” said Robert. “The mailing fees come out of your pocket though. I’ll send you your payment after I receive your message. I’ll need a contact number.”
They traded contact information and closed the channel. Kayla understood now why Adam was there in the first place. It did not make him any less of an ass, she thought, but she understood.
She grabbed a few tools from Adam’s sled and went back outside. She disengaged the two rear directional thrusters she’d blasted and dropped the melted units in the dust before returning to her sled. Adam was still unconscious. She pulled her two least needed directional thrusters and, after a few minutes, had them attached to his sled. It would not go fast, but it would go. She went back to check on Adam. He moaned and shifted as if he was starting to come to. She considered her idea for a moment and then realized he probably wasn’t going to cooperate, so she picked up the torque handle he had brought to use on her and hit him in the head with it, knocking him back out again.
Using the gravity nets, she lifted the ice off of Adam and reattached it to the conglomerate. She then attached the nets she’d worn on her feet earlier and easily lifted and moved him back into his sled. Quickly, she removed his pressure suit and put the re-breather on him. His brief exposure to the thinner atmosphere would not harm him, she knew, and the re-breather would support him until the interior of the sled re-pressurized and balanced the atmosphere within the sled. She left, taking her nets and his pressure suit with her.
Once back at her sled, she rigged the conglomerate for towing. It was smaller than her normal haul, but the fee for the meteorite would more than compensate. She informed the Atmobase that her trespasser would be limping in, probably in a couple of days and gave them the sled’s identification code. They acknowledged her report and told her that they would be watching for him. As she pulled away, she watched Adam’s sled shrink behind her in the distance.
THE GIRL WHO COLONIZED MARS
Bethany Nuckolls
Halley could see the others through the thick, durasynth walls of the atmo-bubble as the solar storm silently decomposed them. She watched the little human figures slowly vanish in the windblown sand. Like in a desert mirage, the figures writhed and swayed. One was her mother. Black, tiny, she looked like an errant crayon scribble across the perfect red of the Martian landscape. Another, desperately digging into the sand for a grave of protection, was her father. She didn’t know how she picked out their shapes from among the crew, but she knew it was them. She watched several others—hazy human blobs—running toward her and the safety of the atmo-bubble. But it was too far, and she knew they were too late. The unseen radiation picked them off one by one.
It was strange that a sun so distant, burning cold in a violet sky like the bioluminescent lure of a deep-sea creature, could melt synth and human flesh in a matter of minutes. Halley had seen it once before. Kendal the mechanic. That’s what the adults had called her. It was the face-plate that had melted away. “Defective,” her father had said in a grave voice, because they all knew the recall on the suits was pointless. It would take months for new ones to arrive. There was nothing to do in the Promethei Terra Colony Zone, except wait out the sweeping sun flares within the safety of the atmo-bubble.
Halley hadn’t been scared though. She knew all about solar storms and living on Mars. She had been homeschooled, but even now, her mother insisted she continue to do research and science projects whenever Earth rose high enough above the horizon to access the teleweb. The first paper she wrote was about Mars. Mars, the planet named for the Roman god of war. That, she realized, was a misnomer. It wasn’t a planet of war. It was simply a planet of death.
For hours, she sat on the cold ground hugging Snacker, her stuffed T-Rex she’d gotten from the Dinosaur National Monument. She knew that when you got lost, you were supposed to stay in one spot and wait for someone to find you. Her father had told her that back when they lived in Utah and the desert had stretched out in a thousand directionless directions. She watched. Waited. But no one came for her.
Then again, she wasn’t the one lost.
They’d all gone out when the well drill had malfunctioned. The wells were the crew’s first priority. They had to be deep enough to reach water, but not so deep that they became infected with the deadly bacteria that thrived deep in the planet’s crust where the radiation couldn’t reach. The colony was to be built around the wells and around the first successful drilling they had erected the atmo-bubble. It freed the team from the suits while at home base, making it easier to move, stretch, pump water, eat, and play. Halley had hardly moved during the first six months. It was too difficult to kick around in her stuffy atmo-suit. It tugged and wrinkled in all the wrong places, and made her feel like a mummy. That’s what the little human figures beyond the durasynth walls had become. Halley watched them vanish slowly like fossils under the windblown sand.
Halley did not cry. She sucked on her vitamin candies instead and waited. She tried using her mind powers to make the little figures in the distance get up and move. It was her mother who’d told her about mind powers. “Put your mind to it,” her mother had said whenever Halley didn’t feel like doing her homework. “You just have to want something bad enough for it to happen. And then … poof! It will happen. Just like that.” Her mother always snapped her fingers when she said that.
“Like the colonies,” her father always added. “You know, Little Comet, we are the forerunners of an entirely new civilization. We’ll probably have a city named after us and everything. In fact, I bet there’ll even be a special street named just for you: Halley Morton Boulevard.” That always made Halley laugh. She liked the word “boulevard” because it was a big, grown-up word. “Halley Morton Boulevard,” her father repeated. “Right in the middle of town.” Right where she was sitting, she thought.
She closed her eyes and watched the reds and purples of the solar storm dance behind her eyelids. Funny how some things could be seen only in the dark.
She woke as the sun was setting. It wasn’t brilliant orange like the sunsets in Utah. Instead, it was an eerie blue, like the sun was choking for air as it went down. The way her parents must have choked as their faceplates were destroyed. She sat up and checked on the distant figures one last time. Her mind powers had not worked. Her mother had lied.
Halley laid down and rolled over on her side, watching the sun sink. Somewhere beyond that horizon, there were other colonies being built. Her father had said so. “Where are they?” Halley had asked.
“See that one right next to that mountain over there?”
“There’s just sand.”
Her father sighed deeply and shook his head. “Guess it’s still too small.” Then he winked at her. “Well, Little Comet, looks like ours is still the biggest and the best.”
Halley still couldn’t see the neighboring colony her father talked about, but then again she wasn’t sure her father even knew where it was since he always pointed in a different direction. He wouldn’t lie to her, too, would he?
Halley stood and went inside her parents’ camp-dome. The walls were thick and plush with insulation, fun for bouncing off of in the low gravity, but not when her insides were weighing her down. She pulled her suit from her locker and arranged it on her cot like her mother had shown her. No holes, no tears, all the pieces were there. As long as the solar storm was over and it was night, it would protect her, she decided. Long enough to reach the next colony.
The suit was difficult to put on all by herself. The gloves made the synth helmet slippery, like trying to carry a fish bowl. Her mother wasn’t there to snap it in place so it made the little clicking sound that meant she could breathe safety. But I do
n’t need a mother who lies. Finally, she managed, though now her nose itched and now there was no way to scratch it. She wrinkled and scrunched her face several times, then turned up the oxygen and breathed in deeply, which helped. She was ready.
Snacker had fallen to the floor and she bent down and picked him up. She wanted to take him with her, but then she decided, no, someone needed to stay here and wait. Just in case. As she sat him up by the window, looking out in the direction of the fallen crew, she said, “Make sure nothing happens to them. I’m depending on you.” The stuffed T. Rex obediently gazed out on the fallen—the evidence of a species on the brink of extinction.
Dr. Slem found Halley Morton on the Promethei perimeter at zero-three-hundred hours and took her onboard her explorer vessel. The specimen’s name was printed on her suit, barely readable. A dictionary scan brought no results in any galactic language, except Ancient Earthic: in reference to a comet, and a sodium-based seasoning.
Ecstatically, Dr. Slem trilled back to the mothership that she’d found a sign of life at last and began vacuum-packing the evidence. Her chitinous claws trembled with excitement as she finished the delicate work and cradled the ancient fossil in her five-jointed arms with care. Maybe this planet was habitable after all and could be colonized by the nomadic Quel’ri. Then she’d be knighted at last—High Scientist Slem—and they’d name the planet after her. No, nobody wanted to live on a planet called Slem. They’d probably just call it New Twallu after the old home planet they’d lost. Or maybe … yes … maybe they’d name it Halley, the Red Planet. That sounded nice.
The Planet of Life.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Carolyn Agee - “The Rustle of the Wind”
Carolyn is an actress and author in the Pacific Northwest who enjoys baking, knitting, and travel. Her credits include works in Petrichor Machine, Niteblade and Mystic Signals. Website: http://www.carolynagee.com.
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