Gravity's Eye

by Ian C Douglas

  “I have a message,” The Failsafe called out. But Zeke didn’t dare linger, they were minutes away from destruction. He ran faster.

  A light materialised from the darkness, an opening up ahead in the tunnel. But it was so far away. In frustration Zeke jumped into the air.

  “Fly!”

  And he did. Like a shot from a cannon, he hurtled through the tunnel. It must be the adrenalin, he thought, powering up his psychic skills. If only he could achieve such superhuman feats everyday.

  But there was no time to think about that, as Zeke whooshed out of the tunnel into one of the most mind-blowing places he’d ever seen.

  His feet found the ground as his brain tried to process the madness all around him. Boulders, stones, pebbles and a galaxy of irregularly-sized rocks were drifting past him in mid-air, in casual defiance of the laws of gravity. He looked up. He was standing in a corner of a huge cone-shaped cavern, the interior of Ascraeus Mons, filled from top to bottom with gliding rocks. Fingers of daylight fell from high sinkholes across the ever-changing patterns. Every rock was spinning on its axis as it glided along, some fast, some slow. Zeke felt like a microbe inside some cosmic kaleidoscope.

  More rocks floated past him. And more. There were hundreds, no, thousands of them, all circling the volcano’s interior, each as weightless as a feather. Zeke took a deep breath and stepped forward.

  And immediately toppled over, knocked to the ground by something unseen. He tried to get up, but it was too strong. A force was bearing down, crushing him into the dirt. He couldn’t move.

  “It’s a gravitational hotspot.”

  Goosebumps danced on Zeke’s neck. With every atom of strength, sweating from every pore, he managed to turn his head to the left.

  One rock among many was slowly turning, bringing Fitch into view. He was sitting in the natural recess of its shape. He looked immeasurably pleased with himself.

  “Don’t bother wriggling, Zekey babe. You’re done for. You’ll black out soon. Then your skull will crumble while your bones snap. In a Martian-minute you’ll be nothing but powdered calcium.”

  “Fitch!” Zeke cried.

  Fitch stood up and leapt effortlessly to another rock. He bounced off that and landed on a third. “I gotta go and expand my mind to the size of an atom. Bye-bye!”

  “Fitch, help!”

  But Fitch had vanished into the weightless maze.

  Zeke struggled against the invisible pressure, but he was powerless. The heaviness on his back was steadily increasing. It was getting harder to breathe. Zeke heard a ringing in his skull and his vision blurred.

  Come on! Mind over matter.

  Zeke summoned all his mental energy into one thought. A red mist flowed before his eyes. He was passing out.

  Come on, it must work!

  Even as his consciousness started to fade, Zeke concentrated.

  Slide!

  For an endless moment Zeke was lost. A sensation of being dragged over rough ground penetrated his unconsciousness. Then the darkness began to thin. Zeke rolled over and slowly sat up. His head was thumping and his body ached as though it had been squeezed through a wormhole.

  “Where am I?” he groaned.

  He looked up at the galaxy of rocks and remembered. At least his psychokinesis had worked. Instead of struggling against the freak gravity he had propelled himself sideways. Now he was sitting a few feet from the hotspot. He staggered to his feet.

  How many more of these gravity crushers were there?

  Did it matter? He had to stop Fitch or die trying.

  He lifted his head and cleared his lungs. He thought of Pin-Mei, of his mother, of Earth itself. He was fighting for them all.

  Zeke jumped. The zero gravity caught him. He didn’t fall, quite the opposite. He continued soaring upwards, scraping his head on the underside of a boulder.

  “Ouch!”

  Another smaller rock swung beneath him. He kicked against it. The effort thrust him deeper. The chase was on.

  Chapter Forty

  Gravity’s Eye

  It’s like a miniature Asteroid Belt, Zeke thought as he dodged and ducked the debris. An egg-shaped boulder floated across his path. He swivelled in mid air till his feet were facing forward. His knees buckled as he collided with its surface. At the same time he pushed back and kicked off. The resulting energy sent him flying onwards.

  Quickly it became second nature, bouncing off rocks as though he were in some gigantic pinball machine. Minutes passed. The rocky flotilla was gliding through a cavern several miles wide. Would he have a chance of reaching Gravity’s Eye before the Failsafe detonated? And where was the Eye anyway?

  Of course!

  The rocks were moving in a great circle. That implied something was in the centre, just as the Sun sat in the centre of the solar system. It had to be Gravity’s Eye. With the Mars’ gravity cancelled out, the Eye had to be the next strongest source of gravitational attraction.

  A cloud of pebbles battered his face. Instinctively, he brushed them away, as he might a swarm of fossilised wasps. He rubbed his smarting eyes and focussed on the way ahead.

  There it was! Gravity’s Eye!

  It was unmistakable. A golden orb around thirty feet in diameter. It was gently spinning on its axis, in the dead centre of the great configuration. Every other rock was rotating around it. Zeke’s heart skipped a beat. Fitch appeared from nowhere and stood on the orb’s summit. His outstretched hand was aimed directly at Zeke.

  “No!” Zeke cried too late.

  Fitch’s psychic power sent him rocketing backwards. His back smashed into a boulder.

  “Oof!”

  The impact knocked the oxygen from his lungs. Before he could gather his wits Fitch struck again. A second psychic wave slammed into Zeke. The force tossed him away, rolling head over heels, deeper into the floating maze. He thumped into a rock and ricocheted into mid-air, dazed and drifting.

  Zeke looked around, still stunned. Gravity’s Eye was out of sight, lost behind the incessant barrage of rocks. But where?

  He shoved a large stone out of his way, still desperately scanning for the Eye. A car-sized boulder bobbed out of the way.

  There it was!

  Zeke stared into the yellow lustre, and thought, Go. He zoomed forwards, powered by psychokinesis. Fitch was nowhere to be seen. Zeke twisted in mid-flight and landed feet first on the Orb. It held onto him, with a gravity stronger than its size would suggest.

  There wasn’t a second to waste. Zeke ran around to the far side. Fitch! The boy was lying down, pressing himself against the surface.

  I see the atoms, I shape the atoms…Fitch’s thoughts were deafening.

  The Orb trembled. It groaned like a monster awakening. The golden patina started to glow.

  “Yes!” Fitch screeched triumphantly.

  He levitated off the surface and up onto his feet.

  He’s activating it by pure willpower, said the voice at the back of Zeke’s mind, vibrating its atoms to the same frequency as the Spiral dimension.

  Zeke pictured an image of many doors, all opening at once. How many did the Spiral need to get through?

  “No!” he cried and ran at Fitch, fists flailing.

  Fitch simply sidestepped. Zeke missed his target, lost his footing and tumbled off the Orb, arms and legs thrashing wildly as he coasted away. His brow knitted as he concentrated his mental energies. Electricity crackled from his eye sockets. He veered around in mid-air and soared back to the Orb.

  Whack!

  He punched Fitch on the ear. Fitch staggered back a few steps. Bubbles of blood streamed into the air. At the same time Zeke landed firmly on the Orb. The intensity of its light dimmed.

  Fitch screamed an obscenity and threw himself at Zeke. They locked arms and wrestled, each shoving against the other. Fitch’s nails dug into Zeke’s shoulders and pierced the flesh. Zeke gritted his teeth. He didn’t dare allow the pain to distract him.

  They continued grappling, trapped in the st
rangest of dances. Neither could gain the upper hand. Then Fitch broke his left arm free and stabbed Zeke’s shoulder repeatedly with the Spikeworm.

  “Ha! That’s useless now.” Zeke spat out the words furiously.

  A look of shock flitted across Fitch’s mud-caked features, only to harden into one of determination.

  “But this isn’t.”

  Fitch brought his knee up hard against Zeke’s groin. Zeke cried out in agony, falling back into a heap. Nausea surged through him.

  Fitch crouched down on all fours.

  Open!

  The glow intensified again.

  Zeke struggled to his feet, biting back tears of pain. The only thing stronger than the pain was the anger. Every muscle in his body burned with rage.

  Fitch glanced up.

  “Go,” he said with a curt wave of his hand.

  But this time Zeke was prepared.

  “No.”

  He felt the psychic wave rush over him, but nothing happened. Instead of blowing away like a tumbleweed in a tornado, he stood firm.

  Fitch stared at him dumbfounded.

  “How can you resist me, I’m special! The Spiral said so.”

  “Just not special enough,” Zeke replied, and did what he was dying to do.

  Thwack!

  His boot smashed into Fitch’s jaw. Fitch’s head jerked backwards with a bestial shriek. Losing his grip, he plummeted away from the Orb. A hefty passing rock smacked into his forehead, releasing another spurt of weightless blood. Fitch moaned and slumped into unconsciousness, dangling in the air. The Orb’s glow faded and its humming died.

  “I have a message.”

  Zeke wheeled round to be greeted by the Failsafe, looming over him on the Orb.

  The glare from its core was so bright, Zeke had to shield his eyes. The rapidly changing symbols on the base were now down to two spaces. Zeke couldn’t read Hesperian numbers, but it was obvious he had seconds to live.

  “Stop your countdown! Fitch is defeated.”

  “I cannot, Zeke.”

  It was using his name now?

  “You must listen to my message.”

  “Hailey!”

  Zeke twisted around to see something that took his breath away. Mariner Chinook and Mariner Knimble hovering a few feet away.

  “It’s going to blow. The whole volcano,” Zeke shouted in desperation.

  The two men exchanged the briefest of looks. Chinook flew at breakneck speed towards Fitch, and grabbed him. They disappeared. Knimble headed for Zeke, arms open wide.

  “You must leave someone behind, when this world is ending. A friend.”

  Zeke stared through his fingers at the dazzling alien machine. Every inch of the Failsafe was aglow, as if it were carved from light. The digits on the base were down to single figures.

  “What?”

  Knimble embraced Zeke in a steely grip. Gravity’s Eye was gone and they were travelling between worlds. Crystalline singing reverberated through the void. Zeke looked back but there was nothing to see, nothing but nothingness itself.

  What about the others? Had they made it out?

  Then the shockwave blasted into them and everything was lost in its roar.

  ~~~

  Zeke, Scuff and Pin-Mei supped mugs of tomato soup as they stood on the observation deck at the Perspicillum. Zeke’s head was bandaged, while both Scuff and Pin-Mei had burns on their hands. A microscopic army of nanomacs were already teeming through all three’s veins, healing and repairing. They were staring down at the pit of Ascraeus Mons, the once smooth basin now a sea of disordered rubble.

  “The inner structure was completely demolished,” Scuff said.

  “Explosions will do that,” Zeke replied in a dreamy voice. He swiped back his dust-encrusted blue hair.

  “It’s a good thing Professor Hiss radioed the School for help,” Pin-mei remarked.

  Zeke nodded.

  “Yes, and Lutz sent Knimble and Chinook to the rescue,” he said.

  “How did they find us so quickly?” Pin-mei asked.

  Scuff placed his soup down on the ledge.

  “Easy for two fully trained mariners. They picked up our thoughts. After they’d rescued you and me, they returned for Zeke and Fitch.”

  “So where is he?” Pin-mei asked again, shivering at the mention of his name.

  Zeke gave a deep sigh.

  “They’ve taken him back to Mariners Valley. Knimble said they had a way of dealing with problems like him.”

  Scuff raised his eyebrows.

  “So…it’s over, bro?”

  Zeke hesitated before answering.

  “Yes, I think so. The Failsafe self-destructed. And an explosion that humongous must have destroyed Gravity’s Eye. So even if Fitch escapes there’s no way he can ever let in the Spiral.”

  “N’ah, it’s never going to be over,” Scuff said. “Who knows what other Martian gizmos are out there buried in the sand.”

  “It’s over,” Zeke said in a determined voice. “I can get on with the business of finding my dad.”

  Pin-mei cocked her head to one side.

  “I just have this feeling. A pre-cog kind of a feeling. The Failsafe knew something.”

  Zeke gave an uneasy laugh.

  “Pin, the Failsafe was made nearly two billion years ago. How could it know anything about us?”

  Even as Zeke avoided Pin’s gaze, the Failsafe’s final words replayed in his mind.

  Zeke had a feeling too, like a cold itching at the back of his skull. This was only the beginning.

  Epilogue

  The Tithonium Mental Health Facility

  Reality shimmered and transformed. Zeke found himself standing at the end of a long white corridor. A stench of disinfectant tickled his nostrils. Mariner Knimble was waiting for him.

  “Are you sure?” asked the Mariner, with a serious expression.

  Zeke gritted his teeth and nodded. Four weeks had passed since the explosion, but his mind was still in turmoil. There was a lot of anger as well as bewilderment. These he could handle. The emotion he hadn’t expected was the sense of loss. He was missing Fitch.

  Mariner Knimble started down the corridor with Zeke at his heels. A cry pierced the silence

  “Zeke!!!”

  They exchanged looks.

  “Was that Jimmy Swallow?” Zeke asked.

  Knimble shrugged his shoulders.

  “Sadly, the School has two patients in the Martian clinic for the mentally unwell. I guess Jimmy’s telepathy sensed you were here.”

  “Zeke!!!”

  His name rang out again, followed by a distant banging of fists on reinforced walls.

  “Would you like to see him too?” Knimble inquired in a flat voice.

  “No way.”

  “As you wish.”

  They came to the last doorway. ‘Patient 66F’ was written beneath a peephole. Knimble produced a key from under his robes and unlocked the door. He gestured for Zeke to go in.

  “And remember, he can’t do anything to hurt you now. Not with his mind. You might want to keep away from his teeth.”

  Zeke drew a deep breath and entered.

  For a split-second he thought he was in the wrong cell. The boy sitting on the simple bed and wearing a hospital gown, couldn’t be Fitch, could it?

  “Come to inspect your boot print?”

  It was Fitch alright.

  Fitch’s hair was completely shaven. His naked scalp was marked with a red X-shaped incision.

  “I’m going to have a lovely scar to remember our time together,” Fitch said. His ice-blue eyes had never looked icier.

  “What did they do to you?” Zeke heard himself say, as if in a dream.

  “You don’t know?”

  Fitch paused for an instant. His eyes watered.

  “They lobotomised me, Zeke.”

  “Lobotomised?”

  “The mariners cut bits of my brain out, on Lutz’s orders. The psychic brain tissue. Scraped clean away. I’m no m
ore psychic now than a normal. I’d rather be dead!”

  Zeke looked away from Fitch’s fierce stare.

  “Of course, Lutz was right to do so,” Fitch continued in a softer voice. “It’s the only way they could stop me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Zeke said.

  “No you’re not, be honest with me. After all that we went through.”

  “After all the times you tried to kill me and my friends,” Zeke snapped.

  A sudden heat was rising inside his chest. This was accompanied by an urge to lash out. Zeke focussed on his breathing and the fury subsided.

  Fitch lifted his left hand. There was a red mark on the knuckle of his forefinger.

  “My friend is dead. My beautiful Spikeworm is gone.”

  A slight tremble passed through Zeke’s chest. A thrill of triumph.

  “So why are you here?” Fitch asked, looking down. “Still harping on about your lost daddy?”

  Zeke shook his head. Fitch gave him a wily look.

  “Maybe the answer to that is right under your nose.”

  Zeke frowned. Could Fitch know something after all? No, Zeke decided, the boy was playing with him. The worst thing now would be to get dragged into another ruse. Instead, Zeke took a moment to summon his words.

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he said at last.

  Fitch spat on the empty floor.

  “Don’t waste your charity on me.”

  “Ok, I won’t,” Zeke replied and reached for the door handle.

  “This isn’t finished, Zeke.”

  Zeke glanced back as his ex-friend. A malevolent smile cracked across the boy’s face.

  “I think it is,” Zeke said, trying to sound defiant.

  Fitch raised his eyebrows.

  “He’s coming, Zeke. The Spiral is coming. He’s very, very hungry and this universe is oh so delicious.”

  Zeke faced Fitch full on.

  “He’ll never find a way through. It’s impossible.”

  Fitch threw him the weirdest look.

  “Zeke, Zeke, why didn’t you save me.”

  A violent tremor shook Zeke’s body to the core. Goosebumps sprinted up his arms and every single hair of his head tingled to its root. The words came out of Fitch’s mouth but they were in Jasper Snod’s voice. It was as if Fitch was just a ventriloquist’s dummy.