Pale Mars

by Garnett Elliott

  "Good God," Ramos said.

  Nadezhda glanced sidelong at Gennady. His face was waxen, but he seemed to be holding up. Yegor, dull-eyed, just looked around him in silence.

  Ramos's voice quivered. "I think most of the damn colony's down here."

  Nadezhda shown her light in a widening circle. It caught a mound of bodies at the room's periphery, fresher-looking than the others. One of them was the right size for an adolescent. Ramos went scrambling over, repeating Jimmy's name under his breath.

  That's all we need right now, Nadezhda thought. "You two keep your eyes sharp," she told Gennady and Yegor. "I'm going to try and calm him down."

  Ramos was bent over the smaller body, weeping. He didn't look up when she approached and put a hand on his shoulder. "It's him," he said. "I thought I'd lost him yesterday, but then he came back. And now I've lost him again, for good."

  She tried to think of comforting words. Light gleamed off metal nearby, distracting her. One of the fresher corpses wore glasses. It was paunchy, familiar. She turned the beam on it—

  Yegor. His face was sunken, dried like a raisin. The glasses hung from one ear. But it was her navigator, she knew with certainty.

  And that meant …

  Behind her echoed a faint choking sound, almost a cough. She whirled, and the lamp-light whirled with her, catching Gennady's face. His eyes rolled white. Something unnaturally tall loomed behind him, pinioning his arms back while it leaned over the top of his head. That something was Yegor. Or an approximation of him. His facial features were distorted; he'd unhinged his lower jaw like a python, swallowing the back of Gennady's head. Even as she watched the widening mouth slid down past his temples, and the creature's face rippled in response, warping into an amalgam of both men. Black hair sprouted from its scalp, and its stretched lips plumped fuller. A pair of leanly-muscled arms burst from the torso, beneath the flabby originals.

  Gennady mewled.

  The sound jolted her to action. She raised the Topchev—and hesitated. With Gennady out in front, and the beam set for wide dispersal, she'd roast both of them.

  Yegor/Gennady's eyes locked with hers. She felt a numbing pressure at the base of her skull, heard a droning sound, like a million angry wasps.

  She adjusted and fired. Instead of a crimson plume, a needle-thin beam of dazzling ruby leapt out and struck the thing's shoulder. Its flesh reacted, curling away from the blast in liquid waves. The droning sound, the pressure on her skull stopped abruptly, and a trilling of impossibly-high pitch filled the chamber.

  But the nightmare didn't die. It spat out Gennady and hefted his body like a shield. Before she could re-aim, all four arms hurled him straight at her. He blurred in the lower grav, a human projectile. She tried to twist out of the way. Gennady's head struck her chest, and the two of them went down in a tangle of limbs.

  She somehow managed to retain her gun. As she struggled free, a loud cough sounded. The shard-thrower's report, followed by another trill. Then Ramos was beside her, helping her up.

  She swept the room with the Topchev's sights. "Where …?"

  "Jumped into the duct," he said. "Same one we used. Think I got it in the back, but the shot didn't even slow it down."

  She handed her Topchev to Ramos. "That's the firing stud," she said, showing him how the trigger worked. "Cover me."

  He did so. She bent over Gennady; the top of his head was slick with foul-smelling saliva, but there were no puncture marks or blood. The thing had been trying to swallow him whole, not bite him. He probably took more of a knock when it threw him across the room.

  His eyes opened, blinked. Still conscious. She tilted his chin to look up at her. "Gennady, can you hear me?"

  "Y-yes."

  "We need to get out of here and after that thing. I don't think you're hurt bad." Not physically, anyway. "Can you stand?"

  "Yes, kapitan." He pushed himself up. She looped an arm under his shoulder to steady him.

  "My head," he said, clutching at his ears.

  "Did you hear a buzzing sound?"

  "More like a tornado, but yes. Kapitan … was it trying to eat me?"

  "I believe so."

  "I felt like I was already inside it. My mind, being digested. Dissolved in acid."

  "Come on." She found his gun, where he'd dropped it. With both her and Ramos armed, they went into the duct after the thing.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The smell of frying insect-paste filled the Taco Mars kitchen. While Ramos bent over the grill, Nadezhda kept an eye out the front window on the ventilator shaft, her Topchev drawn. She'd laid down a bedroll for Gennady between the restaurant's two booths, where he tossed fitfully like someone with a deep fever. Every now and then his eyelids would flutter and he'd groan, before returning to the semblance of sleep. The dome outside darkened. Lights snapped on automatically, as Martian night descended.

  "I'm not so sure we should've come here," Ramos said, setting a plate beside her. A heap of darkened 'meat' mixed with chiles and onions lay atop a flat, circular piece of bread. Despite the aroma, she wasn't hungry.

  "It's as good a place as any, and it lets me keep a watch on that duct."

  "But Yegor—the thing—knew we were planning on holing up here."

  "Let it come." Her fingers tightened against the Topchev's grip.

  They'd found no trace of the creature after searching through the ducts for a frantic hour. Gennady's condition had prompted a return to the surface, and Taco Mars was the closest, most accessible building.

  Ramos slid into a booth. He'd brought a plate for himself as well, but didn't look any hungrier than she was. "Now we know how it sneaks up on people."

  "The perfect adaptation for a predator. It can assume the likeness of whatever it kills. More than that—I've known Yegor for two years, and I couldn't tell it wasn't him. His voice, his mannerisms …"

  "But how?"

  "Gennady said it felt like his mind was being subsumed. And when it looked at me, I thought I felt some kind of intrusion, in my head."

  Ramos glanced over to where the engineer lay. "Is he going to be alright?"

  "I think so. He had a horrible fright, but he seems to be coming around."

  "The other day, when we found Jimmy by the roller coaster … that wasn't him, was it?"

  "No."

  "Which was why the pressure doors weren't forced. We'd brought the damn thing inside with us."

  "And then it killed Yegor, after we left. I don't know what happened to the rest of the people, but it must've gone down to the pumping station—either to excrete Yegor's body, or throw it up—before it came back to the hotel and waited for us."

  "I shot it," Ramos said. "Got it clean through the back with my shard-thrower, while it was running away."

  She recalled the trilling scream. "The Topchev should've killed it. There's close to a gigawatt in even a needle-beam. I don't see how … unless its flesh, at a cellular level, could somehow rearrange itself even as it was being damaged …"

  "We're cooked, is what you're saying."

  "I never say that. The thing was afraid: it retreated. I doubt if it could survive a solid hit on full dispersal." She motioned towards their supplies, stacked near the counter. "And we've still got those Tovex charges. We could use them to set a trap."

  Ramos snapped his fingers. "The PA system. We could send out a message like we planned, telling any survivors to meet us at such and such a place—"

  "—and the thing will show up, disguised as usual. And we spring the trap," she finished. "But what if the real survivors show up, instead?"

  "Right. How would we know? I could ask questions, but if it reads the minds of the people it kills …"

  "That might be a risk we'll have to take. There's every indication this creature is solitary, but the survivors, if there are any left, would likely stick together."

  "So if a group approaches, the odds are better they're human." He rubbed at his chin, where a stubbly beard was taking hold. "We'll need
to pick a spot with plenty of visibility."

  Nadezhda pushed herself up from the counter. "I know a good place."

  "Whoa, there. You want to get started now? Night's coming, and your friend here's in bad shape."

  "No time to rest. We wounded that thing, but I don't think it'll take long to recover." She turned to gaze at Gennady's prone form. "Besides, people in shock come out of it quicker if you give them something to do. Believe me, I know."

  * * *

  They chose the boarding platform at the base of the roller coaster for their trap. It was clearly visible from all directions of approach, including the little glass cubicle that housed the PA system. Gennady, working under the dimness of starlight, wired the remaining Tovex charges to several load-bearing beams around the platform. He looked sharper than she'd dared hope, working with a sense of resolve he hadn't displayed since he'd joined the Sokol's crew. "If the blast doesn't get our vampire," he explained, "several tons of falling steel girders will."

  "Excellent work, Mr. Nureyev."

  He ran a detonation cord some fifty meters back to the PA booth. At Ramos's suggestion, they broke into a gift shop and procured several pairs of field glasses. Strictly tourist stuff with only four-power magnification, but the lenses afforded a good view of the platform.

  "Now we rest," Nadezhda said, nodding at the darkened dome above them.

  They took shifts inside the PA booth. When the Martian sun rose, daylight came fast, without the gradual brightening and flirting of an Earth dawn. Ramos activated every speaker still working in the complex and turned the volume to full. Nadezhda, self-conscious of her breathing echoing through the dome, spoke into the microphone.

  "Attention, all survivors of Chrysetown. We have organized a rescue and evacuation of colony personnel. We can protect you. Please proceed to the roller coaster platform in the main dome. You will be approached and taken to a safe location until the evacuation can commence."

  She repeated her message for good measure. Ramos gave his own version ten minutes later, before switching off the microphone.

  They settled in to wait.

  * * *

  The feeble Martian sun had passed its zenith when Gennady let out a grunt. "Someone's coming from the southeast," he said, adjusting his field glasses. "It looks like … a little girl." Nadezhda's pulse thudded in her ears. "Only one?"

  "It's Bonnie Scruggs," Ramos said. "I recognize her."

  She trained her lenses. A dark-haired girl of no more than six years was approaching the platform, wearing a white lace dress that needed washing. She moved with wary steps, pausing every few moments to look around. "Ramos?"

  "It sure as hell seems like Bonnie."

  Nadezhda reached for the detonator at her side. A squat black cylinder with a switch at the top. One flick, and the bulk of that steel dinosaur would come crashing down. But crashing down on what?

  "Ask her a question," she told Ramos.

  "Like what?"

  "Something only she would know. Do it, quick."

  Ramos switched on the microphone. His voice came ringing out. "Bonnie, honey, it's me, Ray. The taco man. I need you to do something, alright? Hold up as many fingers as you've got brothers and sisters. I know they might not be with us anymore, but just show me how many you had."

  Through the lenses, the little girl was still looking around. She'd seemed to have heard him, though.

  "Bonnie, sweetheart," Ray's voice boomed, "show me how many."

  Hesitant, the girl raised a hand and crooked two fingers.

  Ramos exhaled. "That's right," he said, cupping his hand over the microphone, "but we already talked about this. If the creature can read its victims' minds it'd know that."

  "Wait a minute," Gennady said. "How big was that thing when you saw it?"

  "Taller than you." Nadezhda recalled how it had towered over the engineer with its horrible, expanding mouth.

  "That's right. Alien or not, it still has to obey the laws of physics."

  "I don't understand."

  "Mass. Even if it changes shape, its mass has to stay the same. So if it becomes something smaller, its molecular structure has to become denser to compensate. Much smaller, like a little girl …"

  Bonnie had mounted the platform. Nadezhda canted her field glasses down, to get a look at her feet. She wore dainty white shoes, one pair of laces untied. But when she set her foot on the platform step, the metal bowed slightly as if under tremendous weight.

  "That's not her," Nadezhda said, reaching for the switch.

  Ramos grabbed her wrist. "Wait! We've got to be—"

  He hadn't shut off the microphone, and his words came thundering over the PA speakers. On the platform, the girl turned around, startled.

  "Let go." Nadezhda dropped the glasses and hit the switch with her free hand.

  Nothing happened.

  "Gennady …"

  A sharp hiss. Ramos cried out and slumped forward. Nadezhda turned, reaching for her holstered Topchev, but Gennady was faster. He jammed the hypogun against her neck. Intense pressure drove several cc's of tranquilizer through her skin, bringing a near-instantaneous wave of euphoria. Her knees buckled. She fell and clipped her chin against the table on the way down. Blackness threatened, but somehow she still clung to consciousness.

  "Sorry, kapitan," Gennady said, leaning over her. "Orders are orders."

  * * *

  She floated for a while, awareness crashing over her like wave tops, only to recede again. Gennady had been cautious with his dose. Too much, and her heart could've slowed to the point of stopping. As it was, just keeping her eyes open took heroic amounts of will. She watched passively as he unclipped the EVA tether from his suit and used it to bind both her and Ramos together. He hummed as he worked, nervous, pausing every few moments to pick up his field glasses and peer out the window. She couldn't see what he was looking at from her vantage. The alien, presumably. She tried to say something, but her lips felt too numb. Gennady seemed amused by the attempt. "Finally, I get to do the talking," he said. "No offense, tsarina, but when I'm promoted I'm going to enjoy taking you down a few pegs."

  "W-wh—?"

  "Have you ever heard of the Gemini Project? I suppose you wouldn't have, seeing as how you don't work for the MGB. I'll explain: it's one of our secret weapons against the Yanks. Instantaneous communication." He tapped at his temple. "I've got a twin brother back in Vladivostok, you see. Been in contact with him this whole time. He's a Sensitive, too. It's not perfect telepathy, but we manage. Symbols, images, occasional words or phrases—enough to relay abstract concepts."

  She recalled episodes of his eyes glazing with intense concentration, his taking breaks at strange times to literally stare into space. She'd put it down to a neurotic temperament.

  "While I was 'resting' after the attack, I communicated to my superiors what we've discovered here. A shape-changing creature, capable of reading the minds of its victims. Well, the head of Intelligence is very interested in that. You see the possibilities, don't you? An espionage agent who could do those things … we'd win the Cold War within a year."

  He paused to scan with his field glasses again, nodded. Then he began reloading the hypogun, with what looked like a bulky cartridge.

  She found her words coming easier. "Y-you th-think you can knock out …"

  "Come on, Nadia. I'm smarter than that. Trying a sedative on alien biology?" He showed her the cartridge. It had clearly been modified to fit the gun. "Liquid nitrogen. If I can't reason with that thing, I'll freeze it. And keep it frozen, until we get back to Earth. It might survive, it might not. But at least we'll have tissue samples to look at, instead of atomic vapor."

  "'R-reason?'"

  "A longshot, I agree. I'm going to try, though. That thing's intelligent. I gleaned that much when it was trying to swallow me; our minds linked for a brief moment. Maybe there's something it wants." He took her Topchev, then tucked it and the hypogun behind his back. "Wish me luck. Our little girl's still wai
ting down there."

  "Gennady—"

  "That'll be Admiral Nureyev, soon enough." He gave her shoulder a pat. "Don't worry, tsarina. I won't demote you too much."

  He started to exit the booth. "One more thing. Alyona's already got the message from Luna Control, about the change in orders. She'll be landing the Sokol shortly to pick up our special cargo."

  She watched him climb down the steps. Amazing, how much he'd changed in a short time. Two days earlier he'd been afraid to leave the Volga. Now, with the hint of promotion, he was willing to face the alien hunter all by himself.

  He didn't stand a chance.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Without Gennady to concentrate on, she succumbed to the drug in her system. For a period she drifted insensate, dreamless. But at some point the knowledge of her situation, of being helpless while a monster ranged outside, overcame the sedation. Her eyelids snapped open. Daylight filtered through the booth's window. She couldn't have been out that long. Behind her, Ramos snored softly. They'd been bound back to back, their wrists tied together.

  "Ramos," she said, as loud as she could manage.

  More snoring.

  "Ramos!"

  A grunt, an intake of breath, but a moment later he was rumbling again.

  Gritting her teeth, she canted her head forward and brought it back in a sudden motion. The back of her skull connected with the soft flesh of Ramos's nose. He snorted, coming awake in a gasp of pain.

  "Get your bearings," she told him. "We don't have a lot of time."

  "Wh—what? Gennady, he—"

  "He's an agent of the MGB. The equivalent of your CIA." She'd heard rumors there was an intelligence plant on every spacecraft now. "He's trying to protect the creature. Can you stand? If we both try at the same time—"

  "Why would he do that?"