In the Red

by Christopher Swiedler

  He let her half lead, half drag him off of the path and down a shallow slope. They jogged through the darkness, weaving around rocks and gullies that might trip them up or break an ankle. Michael was just about to tell Lilith that they needed to turn around when he saw a gleam of light somewhere ahead. He angled his headlamp, revealing a set of airlock doors built into the side of a dome-shaped hillock.

  They exchanged an excited look and ran toward the airlock. The doors were heavy and primitive, with two small windows that were so yellowed with age that it was impossible to see through them. Maybe this was where his father and the rest of the research station had evacuated to! Michael pressed the button, and the doors slid open. The airlock was tiny, barely large enough for the two of them. Lilith started the cycle, and air pumps in the ceiling chugged.

  As soon as the inner doors slid open, Michael tore his helmet off and rushed out into a T-shaped intersection with hallways on either side. The only light came from a few emergency lamps in the walls. Red dust covered everything. The air was bitterly cold, with a harsh, metallic taste, and his breath puffed out in little white clouds.

  “Hello?” Michael shouted. “Is anyone here?”

  He ran down one of the hallways and reached a small kitchen with an attached eating area. A metal countertop divided the room in two. On the far side were a sink, some cabinets, and a grease-stained stove. There were no windows, and the only functioning light in the ceiling buzzed and flickered continually. A man wearing a suit without a helmet sat at a table on the other side of the counter with his leg propped up on a chair. His face had a day’s worth of grayish stubble, and he looked as exhausted as Michael felt, but he was instantly recognizable.

  “Randall!” Michael blurted out.

  Randall looked up at them. He blinked for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure what he was seeing, and then he exhaled slowly. “I thought I was hearing things,” he murmured.

  “Are you okay?” Michael asked, moving around the countertop toward the table. Randall’s leg was wrapped in a white sheet. Small red spots were visible along his thigh where blood had soaked through.

  “I’ll be okay,” he said. “I’m alive, which is better off than I thought I’d be twelve hours ago.”

  Lilith peered down the hallway on the other side of the eating area. Everything was dark and quiet. “Where is everyone else?”

  Randall shook his head. “There is no everyone else. We’re the only ones here.”

  10

  MICHAEL STARED AT him. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “Where is everyone? Where is my dad?”

  “At Milankovic Station, I assume,” Randall said. “That’s the rendezvous point for an evacuation. I was holed up in a cave most of the day. I only made it here a little while before you did.”

  “Wait,” Lilith said. “What do you mean, you assume? Didn’t you talk to them?”

  “I couldn’t get a signal through,” Randall said. “The interference was too heavy.”

  Michael’s mouth fell open. If Randall hadn’t been in contact with anyone at the station, then his dad didn’t even know they were here.

  Randall read Michael’s expression. “Please tell me you told someone back home where you were going? Left a note, or something?”

  Michael and Lilith looked at each other. “My brother knows we went outside,” Michael said heavily. “But not that we were coming here.”

  “You drove out to the station, on your own, and didn’t tell a single person?”

  “It was kind of a last-minute decision,” Lilith said.

  Randall exhaled slowly. “Well, that complicates things.”

  “They know you’re here, right?” Michael asked. “Won’t someone be coming back to search for you?”

  “Yes and no,” Randall said. “The good news is that this is probably one of the first places they’ll look.”

  “What’s the bad news?” Lilith asked.

  “The bad news is that it may be a while before they even get the chance to look. Days, at least, and maybe weeks. This is a planetwide emergency, and the Rescue Service has got their hands full right now. Looking for me isn’t going to be high on their list.”

  “Oh, that’s just fantastic,” Lilith said, leaning her head against the wall.

  “Count your blessings. You’re lucky to be alive. Now, first—are either of you hurt?”

  Lilith flexed her shoulder. “Just sore.”

  “All right,” Randall said. “There are some supplies in the kitchen. Let me see if I can whip up some dinner.”

  “I’ll eat anything as long as it isn’t energy gel,” Lilith said. “But I’ll love you forever if you tell me there’s a working bathroom in this place.”

  “Right over there,” Randall said, pointing. He stood up with some difficulty and hobbled into the kitchen area.

  “I can make dinner,” Michael offered.

  “Moving around is probably good for me,” Randall said. “I don’t want it to stiffen up too much. But if you want to help, grab that pot.”

  Lilith opened the door Randall had pointed to. “All I have to say is: between real food and a working toilet, I think I’m in heaven.” She wrinkled her nose. “On the other hand, bathrooms in heaven probably don’t smell like someone died in them.”

  After a quick inventory of the cabinets and some experimentation with the ancient-looking stove, Michael and Randall set out three cups of water and three steaming bowls of vegetable curry with rice. “No utensils, unfortunately, but now’s not the time to stand on manners.”

  They slurped directly from the bowls, getting curry all over their chins and noses in the process. It tasted bland and a little sour, and Michael guessed that it had probably passed its shelf life at least a decade ago, but at least it was real food. As soon as he took the first bite, his stomach knotted with hunger, as if it had just realized that he hadn’t eaten anything solid in over a day. He gulped the rest down as quickly as he could.

  “So what is this place?” Lilith asked through a mouthful of curry.

  “It’s an old homestead,” Randall said. “It was built back in the seventies, right after they started allowing families to stake claims and build private stations. It’s been abandoned for ten or twenty years, I’d say.”

  “I can’t believe people used to live like this.” She arched her neck and looked around at the cramped kitchen area. Michael had to agree—it was a far cry from the homes in Heimdall. It was strange to imagine people spending almost all of their lives underground. But of course, until the magnetic field inducers had been built, this was how everyone had lived.

  “It was in better shape back then, I imagine,” Randall said. “The solar panels are working, more or less, but the battery won’t hold much more than a day’s charge. There’s fresh water, and food for a week or two depending on how we stretch it out.”

  “But we’re not going to just sit around waiting for someone to find us, are we?” Michael asked.

  “We don’t have any other options. It would take days to walk to Milankovic. And with this flare going on, we wouldn’t make it thirty minutes once the sun came up.”

  He was right, of course. But Michael hated the idea of just sitting here. There had to be something they could do. If they couldn’t get all the way to a colony, then maybe they could broadcast some sort of signal?

  “So now you’re all eager to go get help?” Lilith said. “When we’re here, with food and water and a toilet? All I can say is that it’s good one of us was smart enough to explore, instead of sitting around in that cave all day.”

  Michael frowned. “It was logical to stay put and wait for help. Just because it turned out that—”

  “Oh, stupid me,” Lilith said, throwing up her hands. “Expecting Michael Prasad to admit that he was wrong. I may as well wait for the next ice age.”

  “Cut it out,” Randall said. “You’re here, and that’s what matters. Right now I think what we all need is some sleep. Maybe we can figure out a better
plan in the morning.”

  Michael glared at Lilith as he took the bowls over to the sink. He was perfectly capable of admitting when he was wrong. And right now, he definitely didn’t need her gloating like that.

  After they’d cleaned up, Randall showed them to a small room in the back of the homestead. Without any windows, the room felt more like a storage closet than a bedroom. The antiquated airbeds wouldn’t inflate, so they collected all the blankets they could find and spread them out on the floor.

  “Can we take off our suits?” Lilith asked.

  “Best to leave them on, just in case,” Randall said. “We may need to leave in a hurry.”

  They removed their wrist screens and air units and lay down on the blankets. The floor was like ice, and Michael was glad for the heating elements in his suit.

  “Good night,” he said to Lilith, turning off the lights.

  She pulled her blanket over her shoulders. “Night,” she mumbled.

  Michael couldn’t tell if she was really already halfway asleep or just pretending to be so that she wouldn’t have to talk to him. He lay on his back and looked up at the ceiling. But despite an exhaustion that seemed like it would swallow him whole, sleep didn’t come quickly.

  What was everyone in his family doing right now? Once the magnetic field failed, surely Peter would have told people that they had gone outside. He and their mom would have spent a panicked day huddled in an emergency shelter under the city, wondering what had happened to them. Now that the sun had gone down, there would be search parties looking for them. Would anyone be able to figure out where they had gone?

  Did his dad even know they were missing? With communication satellites down, it might take a long time for information to go back and forth between the colonies. He was probably busy orchestrating rescue efforts from Milankovic, believing that everyone back in Heimdall was safe.

  And even if he did find out that they’d gone outside, the magnetic field station was probably the last place he would look. Nobody except Peter believed that Michael could stay out for more than a few minutes without freezing up. Even if he’d left a hand-painted sign telling them exactly where he was going, they probably would have just ignored it.

  Michael rolled over and wrapped the blankets tightly around him. If they were lucky enough to survive all of this and make it back to Heimdall, nobody’s opinion of him would change. They saw him the way they wanted to see him—like a kid with a condition. He could do somersaults on Phobos, and they’d still tell him that he ought to stay inside.

  He had almost drifted off to sleep when Lilith spoke. “I can’t believe you thought Gwen Mackenzie has a crush on you.”

  Michael sat up and rubbed his eyes. He looked around the room. Lilith was gone, and her makeshift pillow was sitting on the deflated airbed. He had a brief moment of panic before he heard her voice coming from the hallway. He reattached his wrist screen and squinted at the time . . . 1147. He’d slept till almost noon.

  He walked blearily down to the common room. Lilith was sitting at the table and Randall was leaning against the counter, drinking a cup of coffee.

  “Good morning,” Lilith said.

  Michael filled a cup with water from the sink and drank it down in quick gulps. “Morning,” he said in a raspy voice.

  “Want something to eat?” Randall asked. “Vegetable curry, breakfast of champions. There are even more boxes of it in the storage room down the hall there.”

  Michael wandered around for a few minutes until he found the storage room. Plastic boxes were stacked up haphazardly against the walls. A metal table with a bent leg sat in a corner, covered with tools and assorted junk. Something next to the table caught his eye: a fist-sized antenna. He pushed a few boxes and a ratty-looking chair out of the way and found an ancient-looking portable radio. Excitedly, he brushed off a layer of red dust and brought it into the common room.

  “What’s that?” Lilith asked.

  “A radio!” Michael said. He set it down on the table and turned it on. The screen on the side blinked and came to life. It worked! Maybe they could use it to get a message to his dad.

  Randall picked up the radio and inspected it. “Pretty high-powered, looks like. Unfortunately, without any satellites it’s not much use.”

  “Do you think it could reach Milankovic?” Michael asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “But Milankovic is over the horizon. A radio like this is only going to work if you’ve got line of sight.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lilith said. “My dad used to talk to ham radio operators who were thousands of kilometers away. Why can’t we do that here?”

  “Earth has an electrically charged layer in its atmosphere that can reflect signals over the horizon,” Randall said. “Mars doesn’t. That’s why we we’re so dependent on satellites.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Drat.”

  Randall set the radio back down again. “But I’ll bet we can set it up as a beacon, so that anyone who comes looking will know we’re here.”

  Michael slumped back in his chair. Randall was right, of course. Basic geometry said that the curve of the Martian surface would put anything more than a few kilometers away out of sight.

  He sucked in his breath. But basic geometry also said that the higher you were, the more of the planet you could see. He ran through some calculations in his head. Milankovic was a hundred kilometers away. Given the curvature of Mars, he’d have to find a spot that was thirteen hundred meters above the surface to have clear line of sight to the colony so he could get a signal to his dad.

  And he knew exactly where that spot was.

  11

  “YOU SURE YOU want to do that?” Lilith asked, raising one eyebrow skeptically.

  “I’m sure,” Michael said.

  “I’m just saying that maybe you should think it through a little more.”

  “I’ve thought it through,” Michael insisted.

  Lilith tossed her cards faceup on the table. “You’ve still got a lot to learn, mi amigo. Full house, tens over sevens.”

  Michael stared at her cards and then down at his own measly two pair. He grimaced. “This is a stupid game.”

  “Where’d you learn to play poker, anyway?” Randall asked, gathering the cards.

  “Let me guess,” Michael said. “Your dad taught you.”

  “Nope,” Lilith said. “My mom. She used to take me to midstakes games in the offshore casinos. She says she’ll give me my winnings when I turn eighteen.”

  “That’s it—I’m out,” Randall said. “And I’m starting to think that from now on we should play hearts.”

  “Oh, I’m even better at hearts,” Lilith said. “But sure, whatever.”

  Randall looked at his wrist screen. “It should be dark by now. I’ve got a few things to check on outside, and then I’ll make dinner.”

  Michael made a face. “Vegetable curry again?”

  “Maybe there’s a hidden supply room somewhere,” Lilith said with a dreamy expression. “Filled with french fries, freeze-dried steaks, and orange soda.”

  “Could be,” Randall said with a laugh. “You’re free to look. Michael, do you want to help me set up that beacon?”

  The one good thing about wearing your environment suit all day long was that it didn’t take long to prep for going outside. As Michael slid his air vest over his head, Randall bent down and picked a piece of paper off the floor.

  “What’s this?” he asked, unfolding it. “Doing some calculations?”

  It was the piece of paper from his dad’s room in the station. Michael must have stuffed it into his pocket without thinking. He grabbed it from Randall and folded it back up. “It’s just something I found. It’s not important.”

  Randall cocked his head to one side. “If you say so.”

  Michael took a deep breath and snapped his helmet into place. His stomach churned with an all-too-familiar anxiety as he counted the seconds until the air unit started up. One, two . . .

  �
��Here,” Randall said, startling him. “Hold this.”

  He shoved a metal tripod into Michael’s hands and picked up the radio and a plastic toolbox. “Ready?”

  Michael did a quick check of his suit diagnostics and gave Randall a thumbs-up. They cycled through the airlock and stepped out onto the surface. The wind was still gusting back and forth angrily. The sun had set a little while ago, and the sky to the west was a sea of red and pink and orange. Randall checked his radiation monitor.

  “We’re good,” he said, and set the radio on the ground.

  Michael unfolded the tripod and positioned it a few meters from the airlock. A patch of dust swirled up into a cloud around his ankles and then settled back down again. The wind seemed to be coming steadily from the north, off the ice cap, which was unusual for this time of year. He craned his head back and squinted at the rocky cliff but couldn’t see any sign of the station. Was there anything left after yesterday’s explosion?

  Randall detached the antenna and wedged it into the top of the tripod, with a thin wire running from the antenna to the base of the radio. “See if you can dig up a hex driver and a set of needle-nose pliers. This thing is an antique. Pretty sure we’ll have to hard wire it.”

  Michael dug through the toolbox and handed him the tools. Randall knelt down and used the hex driver to open a panel on the back of the radio, exposing a circuit board and some multicolored wires.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Randall said, peering into the guts of the radio. “When you took the suit test, what happened? Why did it take you so long to finish the navigation section? I thought you’d be the first one back.”

  “I didn’t realize we were allowed to use our nav computer,” Michael said. “I had to use a range finder and a compass to figure out where I was.”

  Randall squinted up at him. “And you did all of that in your head?”

  “I’m pretty good at math,” Michael said, shrugging.