Cepheus was already down to just three stars. Several other constellations had disappeared completely. As he watched, a dark cloud swept overhead, and the tail of Cygnus flickered and disappeared.
Dust floated all around him like water. Soon the beam from his headlamp was like a solid cone of light that bobbed up and down. The muscles in his legs burned. All he could see of Cygnus was the faint glow of Deneb. A few moments later, even that was gone, and the sky was an empty, inky-gray void.
The sea of dust seemed to weigh on his shoulders, pressing him down toward the ground. The stars were gone. How could he make it to Milankovic now? He had no way of telling which way he was supposed to go. Everything around him looked the same. He tried to focus on the path he’d been following, but after only a few minutes his sense of direction faded and he had no idea which way he was going.
A distant beeping caught his attention. It was barely audible over the labored sound of his breathing. Where was it coming from? He looked at his wrist screen, but it didn’t show any warnings.
The beeping grew louder. He turned and looked at Lilith. Her screen was flashing bright red: Carbon dioxide levels dangerously high.
What was going on? Had there been some damage to her suit during the crash? A problem with her filter, or her respirator? He examined her wrist screen’s diagnostics. It was reporting that her air filter had become saturated and it was no longer converting the CO2 in her suit to oxygen. But how could that have happened? When he’d checked their filters before they left the homestead, both of them had had weeks of life left.
He unwrapped the ropes that held Lilith to the stretcher and gently rolled her onto her stomach. The filter was built into the collar of her suit, just between her shoulder blades. In the glow of his headlamp, he could see a hairline crack in the casing. He opened the outer cover and saw that the crack extended down into the air unit itself. It must have been damaged during the crash. Ever since then, CO2 from the atmosphere had been leaking into the filter, until finally its trillions of molecular sieves were full. Now every breath that Lilith took was filling her bloodstream with lethal carbon dioxide.
He emptied the first-aid kit onto the ground. There was a single spare filter. He popped out the filter on her air unit and swapped it for the fresh one. He sat down next to her and watched the CO2 levels in her suit drop down slowly.
But the real problem hadn’t been with her filter—it was the crack in her air unit. In an hour or two, the new filter would be saturated as well, and carbon dioxide would build up in her suit again. CO2 poisoning was bad enough for someone who was healthy and awake. For Lilith, it could be fatal.
He had to switch their air units, so that she had the working one. Hot-swapping was dangerous in the best of conditions. Doing it by yourself, in the dark, for the very first time . . .
But there weren’t any other options.
Michael knelt down next to Lilith and turned up the oxygen levels in his own suit as high as they would go. He counted thirty deep breaths and disconnected his air unit from the ports on his collar.
His suit buzzed a loud warning. He unsnapped his air unit and set it on the ground. Every second of oxygen was vital, and he needed to do this quickly. But it was a complicated process, and it took him almost a minute to get everything switched over. Finally, he snapped the working assembly back into her suit’s collar and hooked up the intake and exhaust ports. By the time Lilith’s suit was fully reconnected, his own suit was flashing a warning: Oxygen levels nearly depleted.
He didn’t have much time. He fumbled with the connections on the back of his suit. There was no point in breathing anymore; all of the oxygen in his suit was gone. He could hear the blood rushing in his ears. Why wouldn’t the hoses reconnect properly? Everything around him was turning red.
He stared at Lilith’s collar. His brain ticked slowly and every thought took enormous effort. Hoses. There were two hoses, one for supplying oxygen and one for removing carbon dioxide. . . .
He’d been trying to jam the wrong hoses into the wrong ports. He swapped them, and they clicked into place. He took a deep breath but got nothing. He tried again and again. He could feel his lungs expanding and contracting, but it was as if they were disconnected from the rest of his body. His heart was being squeezed by an invisible fist. His eyes struggled to focus.
this is what dying feels like
A wisp of oxygen snaked into his chest. Then another, and another. The air was cold and bitter. He took long, gasping breaths, each one deeper than the last, until his lungs ached with the sheer joy of breathing.
Michael sat next to Lilith and looked out into the darkness.
The air in her suit was clean, and the carbon dioxide levels in her bloodstream were back to normal. Now his worry was his own air supply. He was wearing the damaged unit, which meant that soon his own filter would be saturated and CO2 would start to build up in his blood.
He remembered Randall talking about the symptoms of carbon dioxide poisoning: headaches, vomiting, hallucinations. It had all sounded so horrible at the time, but now his only concern was how far he’d be able to go before he collapsed. He knew their chances of making it all the way to the colony were slim. But if they could get close, then maybe someone would find them. And maybe he would still be alive when that happened.
Maybe. But not very likely. He pulled the ampoules of pseudomorphine out of his pocket and stared at them. Randall was right: radiation poisoning was a horrible way to die. If they were still out here when the sun rose . . .
“Michael.”
The sound of Lilith’s voice, even in such a low whisper, made him jump. She was looking at him through half-open eyes. He squeezed her hand.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Awful.” She exhaled slowly, as if speaking took more energy than she could muster.
“We’re going to be okay. We’re almost home. Just a little while longer.”
Lilith looked at him for a long moment. The corners of her mouth curled up into the faintest of smiles. “You’re still a terrible liar,” she said, and closed her eyes.
He bit his lip. His breath hissed through his nostrils. For several minutes he watched the slow rise and fall of her chest. Then he climbed to his feet and picked up the rope harness.
“You’re going to be okay,” he said again, and set off into the darkness.
Without any stars to guide him, he didn’t know the exact direction of Milankovic, so all he could do was try to keep going in a straight line. The voice at the back of his head laughed grimly. Even with the stars, he’d only had the vaguest of ideas where he was going. What were his chances of getting there now, wandering blindly across the surface of Mars?
When he’d walked a few kilometers, his suit flashed a CO2 warning. The air in his helmet tasted thick and metallic. Soon he had a throbbing headache, as if his brain was trying to burst out of his skull.
After a while—three minutes? thirty minutes?—he was forced to stop again. His arms and legs felt as if they were buried in sand. He sat down and drank one of the water pouches. The random flickering pattern of dust floating in the beam of his headlamp was hypnotizing, and a warm drowsiness settled over him.
He couldn’t fall asleep. If he fell asleep, he might not ever wake up. But surely he could rest here for a minute. Just for a minute. Then he would start walking again.
As his eyelids sagged shut, he saw a faint light in the darkness ahead. He snapped awake. His heart thumped in his chest. He saw it again: the yellow glow of a headlamp bobbing up and down in the darkness.
“Hello?” he shouted. His throat burned with the effort. “Hello!”
There was no response. The light started to move away from him.
“Wait!” He grabbed the harness and struggled to pull Lilith toward the light. But his legs didn’t have any strength, and he couldn’t manage anything more than a slow, torturous walk. The light faded and disappeared.
“Stop!” he screamed.
> Michael turned and looked back at Lilith. He couldn’t leave her here. He might never find her again. But whoever that was out in the darkness, he had to reach them before it was too late.
“I’m sorry,” he said, kneeling next to Lilith. Tears streamed down his face. “I’ll be back. I promise. I’ll be back no matter what.”
He stumbled off in the direction of the light. His lungs weren’t getting enough oxygen, but adrenaline pushed him on. He moved clumsily through the darkness. Twenty meters, then thirty, then forty. He stopped and turned off his own headlamp and held his breath, watching and listening for any sign of the other person.
“Help us!” he screamed. His voice was swallowed up in the blackness. “Please help us!”
The wind shifted, and for a moment a yellow light winked at him, like a star shining in the darkness. As quickly as it had appeared, it was gone again, leaving a faint afterglow burned into his retina. He kept his headlamp off and staggered forward. Every step was slow and difficult, as if the dust in the air were physically holding him back. He didn’t dare take his eyes off the spot where the light had appeared. He told himself over and over that it had been real, that it hadn’t been just a reflection in his helmet or a figment of his imagination. But no matter how far he walked or how long he stared, the light didn’t reappear.
He screamed at himself. Couldn’t he go any faster? There wasn’t anything left to do but run so run run run
After only a few meters he tripped and fell hard. Get up, he thought, but his foot was caught on something. He squinted and pulled at his leg and saw that he’d tripped over a pipe that ran along the ground.
A pipe.
A metal pipe.
19
MICHAEL STARED AT the pipe. Was it really there? He kicked it and it made a hollow metal thunk. It was real enough. It had been buried about half a meter below the surface, but erosion had formed a little gully, exposing a short section that was barely big enough to catch his foot. If he’d been running just a little ways to either side, he would have passed it by without even knowing it was there.
What was the pipe for? Where did it lead? It was about ten centimeters across, and the metal had been wrapped with a thin layer of heating fabric. He could feel the warmth through his glove. Water, he thought. It was a water pipe. Which meant one direction or the other led to Milankovic.
His heart thumped in his chest. He climbed up out of the gully and gauged the direction of the pipe. He walked in a careful, straight line, putting one foot in front of the other to make sure he didn’t wander to one side or the other. After a few dozen meters, a dome-shaped building emerged from the darkness. In the swirling dust it looked ghostly and unreal. It was about the size of his house back in Heimdall, with a single door and a sign that read Milankovic Water Authority. The pipe reemerged from the ground and met up with a complicated-looking series of valves and gauges connecting several pipes at the rear of the building.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something moving in the darkness. He turned and saw the person with the yellow headlamp standing a few meters away. Relief and joy flooded over Michael. “Hello,” he said, fumbling for words. “Thank you—I was lost. My friend and I were lost.”
The person didn’t reply. Something was wrong with their suit. Other than the yellow headlamp, none of their lights or displays were on—not even the basic green status lights that indicated power and pressure. Michael shone his headlamp at the person’s face.
It was Randall.
Michael screamed. Randall’s artificial eyes, frozen over with blue-white ice, stared back at him with an empty expression. His ribs protruded from his chest like bony fingers, and his suit was spattered with blood.
This couldn’t be happening. Randall was dead. They had buried him. He was dead.
“No,” Michael said, sagging down onto the ground.
No, said Randall, and took a few steps toward him.
Terror gripped Michael. “You can’t be here,” he said. He held out his hand as if to ward Randall off. “It’s not my fault!”
Fault.
“Leave me alone!”
Alone, Randall said. He was almost an arm’s length away from Michael now. Michael could see his heart beating inside his chest, squeezing and relaxing in slow, halting beats.
Anger welled up inside Michael. This wasn’t possible. “You aren’t real!” he screamed.
Randall kept walking forward. Michael backed up until his shoulders were pressed up against the door to the station. “My name is Michael Prasad. My mother is Laura and my father is Manish and you’re not real!”
Real, Randall said. He stopped and looked at Michael warily.
“Mars is six thousand seven hundred seventy-eight kilometers in diameter,” Michael said. The words rushed out of him in one long breath. “The molecular weight of carbon is twelve point oh one oh seven. The speed of light is two hundred ninety-nine million seven hundred ninety-two thousand four hundred fifty-eight meters per second and you are not real!”
Real, Randall repeated. He reached out with a blood-spattered glove. It moved toward Michael until the tip of his index finger was almost touching Michael’s helmet. Michael closed his eyes.
“I tried,” he whispered. “I did everything I could.”
He held his breath and waited. The only sound was the beating of his heart in his chest. When he opened his eyes again, Randall was gone.
Michael stared at the spot where Randall had been standing just moments ago. He told himself that it had just been a hallucination, but his body wouldn’t stop shaking. He put his hand against the door of the pumping station to steady himself, and then he staggered inside.
Overhead lights flickered on, and he squinted at the sudden brightness. Most of the space in the station was taken up by a huge pumping apparatus. The pump rumbled as it worked, making the entire station tremble. A variety of pipes connected the pump to the pipe junctions next to the door. On the other side of the room, a set of shelves held everything from tiny screwdrivers to pipe segments as big as his legs. Next to the door, a portable screen with several multicolored wires trailing out of it sat on a plastic rolling cart.
Michael winced at the stabbing pain in his head. He didn’t have much longer before the CO2 poisoning killed him. He searched through the shelves for spare air filters. A wave of dizziness and nausea hit him, and he stumbled into the plastic cart. The cart toppled over, scattering pieces of equipment across the floor. A thumb-sized magnet rolled toward the pump’s casing and attached itself with a sharp thunk.
His wrist screen was flashing wildly. The carbon dioxide in his suit had reached nearly lethal levels. He crawled across the floor on his hands and knees, breathing heavily. He found a box and emptied it. Cans of lubricants, sealants, and other chemicals. Nothing he could use. Something red caught his eye: an emergency kit. He grabbed it and dug through suit patches and flares and splints. At the bottom of the case he found two white plastic cylinders. He had to squint at them before he realized what they were: replacement filters.
Michael twisted his collar around until he could reach his air unit. His fingers were stiff and cold. He opened the filter compartment, jerked out the old filter, and snapped a new one into place.
He leaned back against the pump casing. He could feel the hum of the machinery inside. He was tired. So tired. His eyes slid closed.
Michael was lying on his bed at home. It was morning, and bright sunlight was shining through the window. The tree in the yard outside rustled quietly.
His mom was sitting on the bed next to him. She was smiling and holding her hand against his head. His dad leaned in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. His eyes were deep and somber and Michael couldn’t tell if he was angry, or sad, or disappointed, or a mixture of all three.
“Did someone find us?” Michael asked. “Where’s Lilith?”
Michael’s mom kept smiling. She ran her fingers through his hair as if she hadn’t heard him.
“Pl
ease, tell me how Lilith is.” He tried to sit up. “Is she okay?”
His mom’s smile disappeared. She looked at him sadly and shook her head.
“No,” he said. “That’s not possible.”
Michael looked at his father, who still hadn’t moved. Michael was struck with a sudden terror. Please don’t say anything, he thought. Please.
His dad opened his mouth to speak. His tongue and the inside of his mouth were black. His teeth were yellow and rotten.
Michael screamed.
He sat up with a jerk, kicking his legs and sending the emergency kit sliding across the floor. The sound of his breathing echoed in his helmet. He looked at his wrist screen. The filter was working: the carbon dioxide in his suit had dropped down to a safe level. Not that he needed his suit diagnostics to tell him that: if the filter hadn’t been working, he would never have woken up again.
He put his hand on the pump and stood slowly. His head still throbbed with pain. He followed the pump around and found a control panel with several gauges and readouts, none of which made any sense to him. Below the gauges was a red-handled lever and a small printed sign. In Case of Emergency, Please Notify R. Weiss Immediately.
Impulsively, Michael pulled the lever. The rumbling of the motor slowed, and the readings on the gauges dropped. When they reached zero, the pump shuddered to a stop. The light on the control panel turned red.
Somewhere in Milankovic, the water pressure from this pipe would be dropping. How long would it take for someone to notice? Michael wondered if R. Weiss was going to be happy about getting that call.
Lilith, he reminded himself. You have to find Lilith. She was still out there somewhere.
Michael stood in the doorway and looked out into the darkness. The blackish-red dust was like a wall of static. How was he going to find her? He didn’t have the vaguest notion of which direction he’d been coming from when he stumbled over the pipe. And how far had he run? Twenty meters? Fifty? A hundred? It had all blurred together.
In the Red Page 16
