The Dark Planet

by Patrick Carman

  time the handle moved toward him.

  Should I keep pulling? he wondered. It seemed the only natural

  thing to do. He had to pull hard on it, but eventually the handle

  came flush with the wall. When Edgar let it go it wanted to slide

  slowly back into the hole, so he pulled it back and turned it to

  the left. This locked it into place, where it stayed.

  Edgar had no idea what he'd just done. He turned toward the

  back wall, once so hard and immovable, and saw that it was

  changing before his very eyes. The thick yellow veins of light

  had turned molten red. The veins widened more and more, until

  there were no veins at all but a throbbing wall of heat.

  "What have I done?" said Edgar, his voice trembling and

  unsteady. The place seemed to have come to life and he feared

  for his life all over again.

  Edgar scrambled for the handle and tried to turn it back, but it

  had locked into place. Whatever Edgar had set in motion would

  continue whether he liked it or not. He could wait and let the

  room dissolve into lava or run down the passage and face a

  monster waiting to tear him to pieces.

  The center of the back wall began to melt. Edgar expected it to

  flow across the floor and overtake him, but instead the section

  of wall slid down into the ground. It appeared to be hollow

  below the back wall, so that the liquefied stone simply fell away

  and left a wide opening that could be passed through. Under

  the opening lay a wide, bubbling orange cauldron of lava.

  Edgar approached the opening cautiously and felt the heat

  grow with each step. It became so hot he could barely stand it

  and thought his clothes would ignite into flames. The thin hairs

  on his forearms shrank and twisted as if beaten down by the

  destructive power of heat. A charred black rim surrounded the

  opening, and whatever lay on the other side was hidden by a

  layer of hissing steam.

  Edgar stepped back, away from the heat, and tried to think. If he

  jumped through the opening he might well be leaping into an

  open oven on the other side. Or, just as horrible, the weight of

  gravity might pull him down as he tried to cross over. He didn't

  even want to think about what it would feel like to sink into a

  boiling vat of melted Atherton.

  Edgar looked in the direction from which he'd come and knew

  he couldn't get out. He gathered all his courage, took two deep

  breaths of hot air, and ran as fast as his legs would go.

  I can't turn back! I can only jump with every thing that's in me.

  And so he did.

  CHAPTER 74200

  Station Seven was a metal and glass building that hovered over

  a lifeless, rock-encrusted cove on the Dark Planet. A web of

  entangled steel beams suspended the station in the air, where it

  was safe from the toxic sludge that drifted in and out each day.

  At the vast window of Station Seven sat a woman looking at the

  shadows of a forsaken wood outside.

  "It's quiet tonight," she concluded. "Too quiet."

  The woman brushed a hand across her brow and returned her

  arm to rest on the rail of her chair. There was a coldness about

  her, as if the Dark Planet had made her heart turn to stone. She

  held a vacant but powerful stare into the night beyond the

  window.

  "What will you do?" she asked. As usual there was no one in

  the wide open room to hear her. She had long ago fallen into

  the habit of speaking to herself. There were few others for her to

  hold a conversation with, and besides, she preferred to be left

  alone.

  The woman was having one of her frequent recollections of a

  conversation with Dr. Luther Kincaid. Eight years ago--had it

  been that long? Eight years of silence, and in those eight years,

  the Dark Planet had grown much darker still. And Station

  Seven? It was but a shell of its former significance. Almost

  everyone had fled with the arrival of the Spikers.

  "You will bring him back," the woman said forcefully, replaying

  the words she'd said in that distant conversation. "You will find

  a way."

  There was a visible change in her face--a cringing of hate and

  regret--as the face of Atherton's maker came into her memory.

  The madman Dr. Harding. She could not think of him for a

  single second without being overcome with anger. For a long

  time she had gone every day down one of the three passages

  to visit his laboratory.

  "He'll come back and finish what he started," she would say.

  After a year of waiting she grew bitter. She had trusted Dr.

  Kincaid. Every resource at her disposal had been freely given,

  all of her formidable powers of persuasion put to the test to

  gather anything and every thing he requested. But a year more

  had passed in devastating silence. Not a sound or a signal.

  Nothing!

  Her anger turned a sharp and treacherous eye toward everyone

  who had been involved in the making of Atherton. Thousands of

  others had once walked the halls of Station Seven. She turned

  on them, hating them for their failure to find a solution.

  And then, all at once it had seemed, something had died inside

  the woman at the window. Her moral will collapsed and she

  sank into grief. It happened on the day of the third year passing

  without a sign. A new bitterness filled her eyes, and everyone

  saw. She drove all but the most hardened away and set her

  course in a new and cruel direction. From that point on, Station

  Seven was, for all intents and purposes, abandoned and

  forgotten like so many other places on the Dark Planet.

  It was said that she had lost her soul in the making of Atherton.

  The woman at the window could have gone to another station

  and continued to lead and to work. She had certainly been

  asked. She had been president and supreme ruler in better

  times; she was brilliant, and she knew how to control people.

  But she had long ago made her choice. Her reputation was

  sullied by the failure of Atherton. In the failing world of the Dark

  Planet, this remarkable woman at the window had been

  forgotten along with Station Seven.

  Her name was Commander Judix.

  Every corner of the Dark Planet is failing, she thought to herself.

  Of those who remained, scattered on the bleak surface of the

  Dark Planet, no one went outside. And no one ever visited

  Station Seven. Dr. Harding had seen to that by filling the

  forsaken wood with Cleaners and Spikers.

  Commander Judix was the only person who occasionally

  visited Dr. Harding's abandoned laboratory at the end of a

  darkened passageway. She would allow no one else to enter.

  In the five more years that had passed without the slightest sign

  of life from Atherton, Commander Judix had taken to visiting the

  lab less frequently, a nearly forgotten disaster from a more

  optimistic time. There were more pressing matters at hand.

  And so it was that a small and distant signal could have been

  detected but was not. Inside the laboratory there was a little

  blue light blink
ing on a slick black surface. Soon the blue light

  would move, but would anyone from Station Seven even know

  it had appeared?

  Commander Judix sighed and touched a pale yellow button on

  the arm of her chair.

  "Shelton," said Commander Judix. "Come to the window."

  Commander Judix heard the faraway echo of approaching

  footsteps. It would be a while before the footsteps reached her.

  Station Seven was a place made for thousands, but only a few

  dozen remained. When someone moved, the place became

  haunted by the long echo of metal-soled boots on an endless

  metal floor.

  She had made a decision about the Silo and needed someone

  else to share the bad news. There was guilt over what needed

  to be done, though to be fair, this was not what kept her awake

  at night. Where the children were concerned there were always

  those who would try to oppose her. In the face of a dying world,

  Commander Judix shared no such feelings. It was a matter of

  hanging on as long as one could by whatever means

  necessary. A person's age had nothing to do with it.

  Hanging on wasn't easy, either, since the world had become

  fragmented beyond all reckoning. There were the seven

  stations, separated by great distance and failing lines of

  communication. Commander Judix hadn't formally heard from

  any of the other stations in over two years. There were human

  outposts scattered every where, gigantic metal buildings filled

  with people trying to survive in the daily onslaught of so many

  threats. One such outpost was but twenty miles inland from the

  beach where Station Seven sat alone.

  Sometimes there were stragglers--mostly children--who slipped

  into the forsaken wood and couldn't find their way out again.

  The older a person was, the more devastating it was to be

  outside at all. But there was a magic age, or so it seemed, in

  which a person could be out quite a lot and still survive.

  4200 days old and you could be outside for days at a time and

  still live. It wouldn't even bother a twelve-or thirteen-year-old.

  Before that, the human body was too fragile and there were

  awful side effects to overexposure. And after 5000 days--almost

  fourteen years old--things started to swing the other way again.

  The eyes would begin to sink deeper and darker. Soon, these

  children couldn't go outside at all without goggles and masks,

  which weren't always easy to come by.

  It was this magic age of 4200 days that had kept Station Seven

  afloat as the Dark Planet grew darker and more dangerous.

  Commander Judix finally saw Shelton's watery reflection in the

  glass.

  "Yes, Madam?"

  Shelton was a grave, humorless man. He hadn't always been

  that way, but the circumstances in which he found himself

  seemed to have drained all happiness from him. He had

  resigned himself to waiting for the end and knew it would

  come--probably sooner than later.

  Commander Judix spun around in her chair. She was the only

  person at Station Seven who could not be heard moving

  around, because she had no legs. She rolled from place to

  place in complete silence and was fond of sneaking up on

  people because it was something she could do that no one else

  could.

  "How many 4200s at the Silo?" she asked. Eleven and a half

  years old sounded so young. Commander Judix was much

  more comfortable calling them by the number of days they'd

  been alive. 4200 days sounded like a long time to have lived in

  a fallen world.

  Shelton was terrified by the sound of her voice. She had ruled

  the most powerful hemisphere, then commanded the entire

  world as it fell apart before her very eyes. She had been

  powerful beyond imagining, controlling armies and weaponry

  he couldn't calculate. And in this isolated world of Station

  Seven she remained the supreme ruler. It was an inescapable

  fact that, like King Henry or Queen Elizabeth, she controlled

  every thing within her realm from the wheelchair throne she sat

  on.

  "At last count--that would have been four days past--there were

  only two 4200's, a girl and a boy," answered Shelton in a shaky

  voice.

  "Are you positive that's all there is?" asked Commander Judix,

  alarmed. "No one new in three months' time?"

  "I'm afraid not, Madam. The wood has been very quiet as of

  late. And we lost two more of Grammel's batch last week. Most

  of what he's leaving behind isn't making it to 4000. He finds

  them along the way, you know. They're too young to be

  standing on the banks waiting for someone to save them. He

  only wants them if they're old enough and strong enough to

  work outside."

  The number of new children had been dwindling fast for

  months. Commander Judix knew this. Where once there had

  been one or two children every week stumbling into one of the

  traps in the forsaken wood, now there were hardly any. And

  Captain Grammel was bringing nothing but 2000's who were far

  too weak to survive life in the Silo. Only a year ago there had

  been nine eleven-year-olds at the Silo, but they were gone now.

  The pipeline wasn't filling up as it once had.

  "Send the transport farther out, past the wood if you have to."

  Shelton could already imagine the conversation he would have

  with the dwindling transport team.

  "It will be hard to convince them," he said. "They say the

  Spikers and Cleaners are fighting over territory more and more.

  The forsaken wood is a hazardous place, to say the least."

  A mad rage boiled under Commander Judix's skin as she

  thought of Dr. Harding and the mess he'd left behind.

  "Grammel will be here in four more days. If we can't produce at

  least three children, he's not going to leave us a hundred days'

  worth of fuel."

  Shelton was thinking of the children in the Silo. Only two

  elevens, but there was a big group of tens. Six boys and four

  girls. And there were nines and eights--at least a dozen of them

  in all. That made... what was it? Twenty-four children. And only

  two elevens!

  "It's a shame Grammel won't take them younger than 4200,"

  said Shelton.

  Grammel used the same device as Shelton, Red Eye, and

  Socket to measure the age of the children. If the tip of the device

  was touched to skin it would produce a reading, right down to

  the minute, of how old a person was.

  "Maybe I could convince him. Captain Grammel's probably

  finding it slim all along the coastline," said Commander Judix.

  "He may well take whatever we can give him."

  "Hope won't like this," said Shelton. "She'll make a terrible

  fuss."

  "Then do your job," said Commander Judix. She had turned on

  him with an accusing tone, as if Shelton were the sole reason

  for their troubles.

  Had she heard him? It wasn't a few Spikers in the forsaken

  wood, it was a pod of them, and that meant a queen. They

  couldn't let anything that big near Station Seven, but without


  Grammel's fuel the power station would stop running. What

  then? The air would run out, and the water, too. But most

  appalling of all, the electric shield would come down. They'd be

  unprotected. The Cleaners and Spikers could get in.

  "I'll make them go farther out," he said. And then, thinking like

  the coward that he was, he added, "You know, a ten-year-old

  could be almost 4000 days old. We have ten of those in the

  Silo. I could check them to be sure."

  Commander Judix didn't look at Shelton. She couldn't look at

  him without wanting to run him down with her chair. Is this what

  she was left with? Cowards and weaklings and fools! Everyone

  else had fled long ago. But what choice did she have? Spikers

  and Cleaners were rampant in the forsaken wood. She would

  have to start conserving fuel, running the power station on

  reserve. Soon, so very soon, the shields would fail and leave

  Station Seven open to attack.

  They took my legs before--and my family. What would they take

  this time?

  "See how many days old the tens are," she said. "And tell Red

  Eye and Socket what's going on. Don't say anything to Hope

  until we have to. You still have time to make this right."

  The words stung in Shelton's mind as Commander Judix spun

  her chair around on its wheels and rol ed away in silence,

  leaving him standing alone in a giant, empty room.

  Grammel. Shelton couldn't stand the captain of the supply ship.

  Every hundred days, like clockwork, he would come on the

  churning waters of the acid-soaked sea. Moored at the hundredyard tip of the stone jetty, he would pull the horn and send

  bil owing plumes of black smoke into the air. Shelton could

  actually imagine the man's face, completely covered in soot and

  smiling from ear to ear, rows of white teeth flashing as he

  plugged in the fuel hose. Grammel's ship was huge and ugly,

  spewing a filth into the air that was as much liquid as smoke.

  The ship left everyone and every thing in its path covered in

  rancid soot.

  "You'll take the tens," whispered Shelton. "You'll take them or

  we'll have your precious ship and every thing in it."

  But a ship without a captain wasn't likely to set sail again, and

  eventually the fuel would run out for good. Then what would he

  do?

  A little while later Aggie woke with a start as she always did,

  disoriented in the ever-present darkness of the Silo. She never