Fitch laughed coldly and vanished into the brilliant daylight. The airlock closed behind him with a mighty clang.
Before Zeke could gather his wits a scratching sound came from deep in the gloom. The sound of something coming closer.
“Where are you flesh-bodies? Cratan must keep you safe.”
Zeke’s skin crawled. The wound on his shoulder was throbbing painfully. His legs felt weaker than jelly, as much from dehydration as the poison in his bloodstream. He summoned every nanometre of strength. Pictures flitted through his mind’s eye, his father, his mother, Pin-mei weeping on Scuff’s shoulder. He had failed them all. But to die here, at the hands of that crazed Martian-human would be an even greater failure— they had to escape!
“Urff!” he grunted, forcing himself back onto shaky legs. “Come on Trixie. It’s now or never.”
She half opened her eyes and murmured something inaudible. Zeke grabbed both her arms and heaved her up.
Diamonds of light glinted in the shadows.
“There you are, pretty children. Cratan will look after you. Make a soft bed for you in the ground. Sleep peacefully till the end of times.”
The Gshnodaa crawled from the darkness, a pitiful but deadly gargoyle.
“Come on!” Zeke panted, struggling with his shoulder under Trixie’s arm. They staggered towards the airlock.
“Do not go flesh-bodies. Cratan lonely. So confused. You stay with Cratan forever.”
Zeke dared not glance back, as though the very sight of the monster would petrify him too. Instead he stared at the steel barrier of their prison.
“I am psychic! I am a Mariner!”
He screwed his face into a grimace of concentration.
Nothing. Nothing. And then—
“Yes!”
The airlock rolled open just a little. Enough. Enough to squeeze through.
“No-o-o-o-o-o!” Cratan wailed as they escaped from its lair.
The air outside was cool and reeked of the iron oxide in the soil. Zeke blinked in the sunshine, desperately seeking a glimpse of Fitch. The vast plain was deserted.
Trixie screamed.
A scaly, crystal-encrusted hand had reached through the gap and gripped her ankle. Rivulets of blood dripped onto the ochre dirt. Cratan’s fingers had punctured her calf in three places. Zeke stamped on the creature’s wrist.
“No!” Cratan wailed in English, as its arm snaked back, out of sight.
“We’ve got to get away,” Zeke stammered.
Still supporting Trixie’s weight, he staggered up the shallow incline to their camp. There were just two sleeping bags and two backpacks now. Fitch’s gear was missing.
“Ow,” Zeke cried aloud.
A bolt of intense heat overwhelmed him. His body was too dry to sweat, but his flesh roasted. Poison coursed around his veins like a flash flood. His heart pounded harder than an engine.
His grasp on Trixie weakened and she slipped away from him. His heartbeat grew unbearably loud, deafening. Faster and louder.
No, not his heart, but a noise far away. Far away but coming closer.
Zeke swayed, regained his balance, and scanned the environment. The boulder-strewn valley blurred. He focused on a dark blot, something moving, something approaching. His knees trembled. The shape hurtled out of the haze and took form. A monster! A new monster! A beast made of galloping limbs and heads and long black fur flapping in the breeze. Terror slammed into Zeke like a hammer. He collapsed.
“It’s in my mind,” he told himself.
But the monster was covering ground at a terrific speed. Zeke could see now it had two distinct heads.
“It can’t be?”
A horse, a jet-black horse, was galloping towards him! But there were no horses on Mars. And on its back rode a demon, a man half-horse himself. Long wild locks, the colour of night, cascaded around a bristly face. Zeke winced at the sight of the demon’s eyes. They were the dark, hollow eyes of death.
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Inside a Dream
Mars was gone and replaced by a world of intricate, fleshy tubes. Red water coursed through the tubes, teeming with activity. Strange objects bounced along with the current. Some resembled fuzzy spores while others were disc-shaped.
Blood cells, Zeke thought.
The platelets tumbled through the red sea, gathering on the bottom. More piled up on top, crushing those beneath. Then more and more, building into a cone shape that coalesced into rock. As it hardened the scene changed hue to an icy violet. The colour of a Martian sunrise.
Zeke found himself on a vast slope. The one from his dreams. It was beginning to feel quite familiar. The odd thing was that he was sitting up in a hospital bed, complete with cot sides and plump white pillows. Halfway up a volcano! Worse, his head was aching and his lungs burned.
His mind raced. Surely everything he could see was another illusion. But the pain felt very real. What was happening to him?
He turned and peered over the pillows. An enormous ochre plain panned out below. A crimson shape loomed on the horizon. Zeke recognised it immediately. Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in the solar system. Even though it was miles away, it looked impossibly big, almost painted onto the sky. Zeke had made a study of Martian geography and knew that if Olympus Mons was in the northwest, he had to be situated on Ascraeus Mons, the northernmost volcano of the Tharsis Bulge.
Zeke dreamt of Ascraeus Mons on the night of his first encounter with the Failsafe. And now the crusted lips of the Gshnodaa had whispered the same name. It had to be home to Gravity’s Eye, whatever that was. This could be no coincidence. But how, and more crucially, why?
A shadow blotted out the weak Martian sun. Something was circling in the sky, a huge, pallid shape with wings. Like a white pterodactyl? No, something else. A giant bat. A cream-coloured bat. The animal flew in ever decreasing swoops, shrinking in size. It settled onto the rail at the end of his bed, now no bigger than a man. It rustled its wings and tucked them into the folds of its long ceremonial gown. Not a bat at all, but Principal Lutz!
“I must!” she said.
“He’s too sick. I won’t allow it,” said a disembodied voice. The soft voice of a young woman.
“It’s of the utmost importance. I wouldn’t insist otherwise.”
“The answer is still no.”
“Doctor, don’t make me pull rank. I’m principal of the most important school in the—”
“Solar system. Yes, I had noticed. And that makes me doctor of the most important school in the solar system. Hailey is my patient and in the Medical Facility my authority outranks yours!”
“The Big Three have ordered a mind purge. In the interests of public safety.”
“Principal, you must leave now. I’ll call you if his condition improves.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then he’s off to Tithonium Central, with the other three.”
Lutz vanished.
Oh! Zeke thought.
The bed began to move. Wobbling on electrocastors, it started climbing the great slope. For a split-second the scene blurred. He was still lying in the bed, but indoors. Shelves stuffed with medicine jars surrounded him. Somewhere a computer was whirring. No wait, everything blurred again and the mountainside reformed. Was he dreaming a dream within a dream? It was too confusing.
He rested his head back on the thick pillows and watched as boulders passed him by.
A hospital bed. A most unusual form of transport, he thought.
Mchx-dthfkii, Zeke thought on impulse. The name sent a tingle down his spine. An alien. A two billion year old ghost. Somehow it was linked to him. He realised now that the Orb of Words had exposed to him to more than Hesperian vocabulary and syntax. There was much more buried away in his subconscious. Some clue in a cosmic mystery. If only he could figure it out.
“I wonder what you look like?” he mused to himself. “Wait!” He knew exactly what the creature looked like! Nearly four months
ago, as the Televator carried him high above Earth’s atmosphere, he had discovered the orb and fallen into some kind of trance. The face he had seen was Mchx-dthfkii! He realised now that this was no random image thrown up by his imagination. There could be no doubt. He, alone out of all humanity, had seen the visage of a Martian. Zeke shuddered.
The bed bumped and halted. Zeke noticed a nearby rock no larger than a dog. Actually it resembled a dog. A freak whim of the winds, over the millennia, had eroded this protrusion into a coarse canine shape. And there, a few yards beyond in the ground, lay a sinkhole. A gash in the side of the volcano wide enough to swallow a man.
That is important! Now awake far-child. Put those brain cells to good use.
Zeke twisted around, seeking the source of the Hesperian voice. Nothing! “How can I wake from a coma?” he shouted to the empty sky.
A brilliant light fell upon him. The sun flared like a beacon. A radiant yellow corona cascaded out, across the sky. A light that formed into currents flowing outwards like rivers of gold. Strands formed in those rivers and gathered, twisting, entwining…into hair! Lustrous blonde hair! The sun transformed into the face of Trixie Cutter, her golden locks rippling out from a face of angelic beatitude.
Zeke grudgingly admitted to himself that Trixie Cutter, when not bullying her victims, was actually rather pretty.
That won’t work on me, she said and faded back into the sun. Zeke racked his brains. What was the significance of that sentence? Trixie had said it to Fitch. What had she meant? Zeke cast his mind back to the dark, ruined corridor of the Beagle Station. At the time Fitch was brandishing his Spikeworm. So she was immune to the Spikeworm, but why her and not anyone else?
Think damn you! Trixie Cutter, the only person at the school, teacher or student, capable of giving Fitch a run for his money. Right from the start she’d been on to him. She and Fitch had become conspirators. Her gifted, razor-sharp mind had caught the measure of Fitch Crawly at their first meeting back at the Cranny.
Of course! She understood how the Spikeworm worked!
His psychotronic skills were powerless against her. It wasn’t just that her own mental abilities were so formidable. She had known what he was up to from the start. Forewarned is forearmed.
The Spikeworm! It was another of his mind-control tricks. He created it from his unique blend of psychokinesis and telepathy. But if the Spikeworm wasn’t real, then neither was its venom. The whole thing was an illusion. What was the word? Psychosomatic! Even if there’s nothing physically wrong with you, if you truly imagine you’re sick, you can actually experience symptoms. Fitch made sure he planted seeds of fear in the minds of his victims. The Spikeworm’s prey became sick because they believed themselves to be sick. It was all in the mind! He brainwashed them into thinking they were ill and their imagination did the rest.
Fitch Crawly. Zeke felt nothing but loathing for the moon boy.
“I’ve got to stop him.”
The horizon cracked, splitting the sky from the land. A gap that widened rapidly. And through this gap Zeke could see the real world. His eyes were opening.
Chapter Thirty
The Medical Facility
Pools of soft amber light illuminated dark clefts in the cave wall. Zeke was horizontal. Two shadowy figures towered over him. A knot twisted his stomach. Supposing they were aliens? Martians? Monsters? His eyes adjusted. The room gained definition. Pin-mei and Scuff were sitting at his bedside. Pin’s face was pale and weary. Scuff was picking his nose.
“He’s awake!” Pin-mei cried. She threw herself on Zeke and hugged him.
A wave of joy swept through him. Then the wave faltered as he remembered their last meeting. His heart filled with guilt and he pushed her away. She looked at him in bewilderment.
“I’m so sorry,” he began, the tears forming. “I betrayed you. I don’t deserve your friendship.”
The dam broke. Zeke cupped his hands over his face and bawled. Scuff and Pin-mei exchanged looks, both lost for words. For a few seconds they listened to Zeke weeping. Then Pin-mei pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, lowered Zeke’s hands and began drying his cheeks.
“You’re my Martian big brother, remember? And family always forgives. In any case—”
Scuff shuffled to the edge of his seat.
“I better bring you up to speed, bro. Once your psycho-psychic drove off into the night, all the little mind games he’d been playing here wore off. Lutz woke up the next day as mad as hell. Apparently he’d been hypnotising her big time. She raised the alarm when she discovered you were missing.”
“Really?” Zeke said, sitting upright.
“Sure, she accused you and Crawley of kidnapping Trixie Cutter.”
Zeke fell back onto the pillows.
“Oh great. She’s manufactured just the excuse she needs to expel me. Again!”
“Slow down, bro. You’re in the clear.”
Zeke stared at his friend, dumbfounded.
“Trixie’s discharged already. She had dehydration and concussion but nothing Doctor Chandrasar couldn’t fix.”
“And?”
“Trixie declared your innocence. How Crawley kidnapped the both of you. Lutz has withdrawn her allegations.”
“Oh!” Zeke remarked. Saved by Trixie Cutter? Wonders would never cease. “So how did we get back here?”
Pin-mei beamed at him. “Found by a Marmish yesterday. He radioed in your position and Mariner Knimble translocated there in an instant. Within seconds of receiving the message he had you and Trixie in the sickbay.”
Scuff interrupted. “Saved both your lives. So the Doc says.”
An image galloped into Zeke’s mind, of death on a horseback. He looked at his friends.
“You know about the Martian Amish, don’t you?” Scuff said.
Zeke shook his head.
“Bro! You need to spend less time reading textbooks and more time the tabloids. The Marmish live a back-to-basics lifestyle here on Mars. Horses, no fusion power, etcetera. Totally nuts if you ask me, but, whatever. One of their leaders found you. I think his name was Cain, or something.”
“Really? I hope to get to thank him one day.”
“You will,” Pin-mei replied, her eyes glowing in the dimness.
Zeke was about to ask what she meant by that remark when Scuff clapped his hands together.
“So bro, what really went down with the Creepy Crawley? The whole truth and nothing but!”
Zeke sniffed, wiped his eyes and began.
~~~
Scuff scratched his head.
“So you’re seriously suggesting Cratan is a two hundred year old human that’s morphed into a half-Martian?”
Zeke nodded.
“I’m just thinking. You said it was all scabs and crystal.”
Zeke nodded again.
“Maybe it’s made of coal and diamonds.”
“Is such a thing possible?” Pin-mei asked, her eyes wide with wonder.
Scuff puffed out his chest.
“Why not? People are carbon-based life forms. Coal and diamonds are just other manifestations of the same element.”
“But why would that happen?” Zeke asked.
Scuff stroked his chubby chin.
“Supposing the Hesperians were made out of a different element to life on Earth? If this yellow orb was trying to change the astronaut into one of them, that would be a huge stumbling block. The human would be made of the wrong material. If the power was somehow rewriting the atomic structure, to change it into the right element, that might cause the carbon to ossify. The orb is a machine with no experience of human life. It might not understand the consequences of changing organic carbon to inorganic.”
Zeke stared at his friend.
“You lost me back at the first sentence. But changing atomic structure, isn’t that the same thing as transubstantiation?”
“So Creepy Crawly was right. The ancient Hesperians did have a way of manipulating atoms.”
“We’ve got to
stop him,” Zeke said through gritted teeth.
“He must be at Ascraeus Mons by now. It’s too late!” Pin-mei said.
“Only if he translocated,” Zeke began. “But he didn’t seem very keen on that.”
Scuff gave a little mock cough.
“That’s because he can’t.”
The other two gawped at him
“He’s not able to translocate. It’s the one psychic skill he’s a total flop at.”
“How do you know that?” Zeke cried incredulously.
“I saw it in his thoughts.” Scuff replied with a cocky smile. “I am an A-plus at telepathy, after all.”
“Reading someone’s mind without consent is naughty” Pin-mei said with a stern frown.
The Canadian leaned forward, hatred flaring across his face. “Not when he’s brainwashing my best bud!”
“That is an exception,” Zeke agreed. “Anything else you found out from his brainwaves?”
Scuff’s look of hatred cooled into a serious stare. “Only that he’s ruthless and will kill anyone who gets in his way.”
“Still, we have to stop him,” Zeke said, his lip curled, his brow furrowed.
“Yes bro, only there’s one more thing before we get to that.”
Zeke glanced at Scuff, then Pin-mei and back to Scuff.
“What is it?”
Scuff pulled a strange face.
“This.”
He dropped from his chair and scrambled under Zeke’s bed. Grunting and puffing Scuff heaved a large black sphere out from the darkness, dumping it on Zeke’s lap.
Zeke blinked in disbelief.
“It can’t be!”
“Can’t be what?” Scuff asked.
“It’s the orb that Ptolemy Cusp showed us at his banquet, or one identical.
What’s it doing under my bed?”
Scuff and Pin-mei gave baffled looks.
“We were hoping you were going to tell us.”
~~~
After Scuff and Pin-mei took the dull, useless orb away, Doctor Chandrasar arrived and found her patient awake and miraculously recovered. She examined him from tip to toe and pronounced him in rude health with a vigorous ruffle of his hair.
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