No Way

by S. J. Morden

  But others were coming soon. It would be fine. Everything was fine.

  He consulted his map again and angled the nose of the buggy back towards the volcanic slopes. The quality of the ground slowly changed again: fewer craters, and more exposed rock. Rilles and runnels snaking downwards, like smaller versions of the Santa Clara, almost as if a dusty, crater-pocked sea lapped up against a continent, flowing up its rivers and retreating from its promontories.

  He had to be getting close, but how to get to where he wanted to be through what was rapidly becoming a labyrinth of channels? He glanced at the map again, and saw that he was losing his signal. Blocked by the intervening higher ground, his suit was struggling to stay connected.

  He could retreat. He could also, looking at the last iteration of his map, go higher still. If he drove up and out of the valley he was in, he’d find himself on the clear slopes above. He eased forward, crossing the unfamiliar terrain until his view opened up again, and he was on one of a staircase of rock steps that seemed to climb, irregularly and imperfectly, all the way to the very top.

  Frank had his signal again, and the cross that marked his target was centered on his position. Somewhere, within a couple of hundred yards of where he was, was what he was seeking, but damned if he could see it. He parked up and walked up to the next rock step. Though the riser was blunt, he found out just how difficult it would be to climb in his spacesuit. His knees creaked with the effort, and he used his hands as much as his feet.

  He pulled himself upright, and stared out across the lower slopes, looking for a splash of color or scorch-marks from the landing rockets. Right down on the plain, momentarily, he saw a figure in a spacesuit, walking out from behind one bluff and into the shadow of another. From the size of them, it could have been Marcy again, or Alice, or Declan. Definitely not Zeus. He raised his hand, but that was stupid, and he dropped it again quickly. They’d gone, anyway, and they were never really there in the first place.

  He was still on the clock, and he had to get on with his search, or abandon it. Where could the cargo drop be hiding?

  There was a channel nearby, one with steep, almost cliff-like banks. Wary of going too close to the broken edge, but having to peer down inside it all the same, he shuffled up to it and let his eyes adjust to the dark. There. The parachute had wrapped itself around the cylinder, covering it almost completely, which was a new one on him. And when he looked again, the parachute seemed lumpy. It didn’t bode well for the state of the cargo inside, but he was going to see for himself whether there was anything he could salvage.

  The best way in was to drive down from the top of the channel. The buggy made heavy weather of the steps, just like he had, and he had to dial the plates to their maximum surface area to get enough grip, even at the slowest speed. The trailer grounded, and he had to drag it, vibrating, until the wheels met the rock again and slowly rolled around the step.

  He had to do that twice more, scraping the underside of the trailer frame along hard volcanic rock before it cleared. But then he was able to swing round and into the channel. The banks rose around him, but the valley floor was flat enough. It curved left and right, and finally he was able to park up next to the cylinder.

  It looked at first sight as if it had landed safely on the top of the bank, and then fallen the fifty feet or so into the ravine. The cargo doors had burst open, and then the parachute had descended on it, covering it up.

  Frank pulled at the fabric, heaving great handfuls towards him as if it was a giant sheet. He was right: the doors were both open, and there were obvious dents and dints in the casing, gouges where the metal underneath had been exposed and shone dully silver.

  Half the drums inside were missing, and he turned around, expecting to see the debris scattered down the channel. It wasn’t there. He went back to the cylinder and peered inside. Definitely, three of the six drums weren’t present. The insulation around them had gone. The straps that secured them in place had gone. The drums themselves had gone.

  And yet of those that remained, everything was intact. That… made no sense.

  He checked the catches on the doors, the ones he usually used the tool that hung on his belt to turn. The doors hadn’t burst. They’d been opened. The parachute: the parachute hadn’t fallen on the cargo. It had been placed there, deliberately, to keep the dust out.

  His feet. The channel bed was bedrock, with a fine covering of weathered sand and wind-blown dust. Bootprints, identical to his, in places where he hadn’t walked. And there, twenty feet away, tire tracks that showed that a buggy had come up the valley, and then three-point-turned back down it.

  Brack?

  It couldn’t be Brack. Brack would have had a trailer, like he had a trailer. He’d have winched the whole cylinder on and carried it away.

  Was it… him? Was this Frank? Was he suffering some kind of psychosis?

  He put his hand on the side of the rocket. It was real. As real as the boots and the buggy.

  In a daze, he left everything as it was and climbed back into his buggy’s seat. He clicked the harness on, unconsciously testing the clasp had locked by leaning forward because he could never hear it fasten.

  He looked at the tracks in the ground ahead of him, and started to drive slowly, following them down the channel. There were two tracks, overlain. One that went towards him, one that went away. There was no mistake here: an XO rover, driven by someone in an XO suit, had been out this way in the last couple of months, and maybe it was Brack, and maybe it was him.

  Frank remembered conversations he’d had with Declan, when they thought that someone had been using the buggies on unauthorized jaunts at night. They’d concluded that all those journeys had been to the descent ship and back, not this far out. But Brack had definitely been out on the plain, picking up the NASA equipment. Declan would have spotted the discrepancies in the power levels a mile off, and a fully drained battery wasn’t something anyone could hide from him. So Brack must have recharged the fuel cell from the ship before returning it, masking what he was doing from the surviving cons.

  It had to be Brack, and yet… the tracks, once out of the channel, turned resolutely and inexorably south-east, skirting the ragged volcanic rock and following the edge of the dust sea. The buggy had come from the south, and it was returning that way.

  There was nothing south of him. Nothing but red desert.

  Finally, he came to his senses, and stopped. He was past halfway through his air, and nearly seventy miles on the clock. He hadn’t hammered it, but he’d either have to drive quicker to get home, or avail himself of the spare life support at the top of Long Beach. That was now thirty miles away as the crow flew, if there’d ever be such a thing on Mars. Add the fifteen-twenty along Sunset and up the Heights… the range of the buggy was somewhere between one fifty and two hundred miles.

  He was no longer safe, even by his standard. And he was towing, which despite being empty added an extra strain on the fuel cells.

  And still the incontrovertible evidence of his eyes was that the tracks he was following led south. They originated in the south, and were using their outward-bound journey to guide their way back.

  Back to where?

  Frank looked at his map, zoomed into the highest detail allowed. It didn’t show individual tracks, because the resolution at that scale was too low. Disappointingly, it didn’t even show Sunset Boulevard, which had to be the best-delineated and most-used road on Mars. He checked for other features it might show. Not the MAV, which was a recent addition and perhaps the satellite photography hadn’t caught up with it. But there was the ship, and the MBO was a clear artifact in pale pink and white.

  He searched back south, scooting the map up and down, left and right with his fingers. If there was something there, the map didn’t show it.

  Those tracks, though. He wasn’t imagining them. Something—someone—had been at the cylinder. Someone in XO gear. Someone that came from, and disappeared back into, the wasteland that was sou
th of the volcano. It couldn’t be Brack. He was certain it wasn’t him.

  He stood up on his seat and hung off the roll bars, just looking across the plain until he couldn’t see any more. He blinked, hard, and held up the map in front of him, trying to match it to the landscape.

  Even standing there, breathing, was pushing his luck. His judgment, his sanity, was flawed. He should turn around and never come this far out again. Stick by the base. Wait for the NASA mission. Stay safe. Survive. Go home.

  He hung his tablet back on his belt and strapped himself in again.

  Just a little further. Follow the tracks. He rounded a headland, and in the next bay, in the distance, he saw what looked like a buggy, parked up at the end of a channel.

  He rolled to a stop. A buggy. A buggy just like his. It was the last thing he’d expected to see. Literally, the last thing.

  How was this possible?

  8

  [Internal memo: Mars Base One Mission Control to Bruno Tiller 12/8/2048 (transcribed from paper-only copy)]

  We have a problem.

  [transcript ends]

  He couldn’t tell how long he’d sat there, just staring. Only that when he finally shook himself, he’d dropped a couple of points of stored O2.

  It was still there. It hadn’t vanished like all his other imaginings. A buggy. Parked? Or abandoned? There was no way of telling if it had been there for two minutes or two weeks. A moving buggy created dust, and the frames, wheels, controls, were always covered in a film of the stuff. Six weeks. Six months. Longer than that?

  Frank eased forward a hundred feet or so. There was no sign of anyone. No reason for there to be. Because he was the only person on Mars, right?

  He rolled closer. If this had happened a few months ago, Alice would be in his ears, asking him what the hell was wrong with him and threatening to alter his breathing mix to calm him down.

  But she wasn’t. She was absent. She was dead. Marcy was dead, Zeus and Dee and Declan and Zero were all dead. Brack was dead. He was the last one alive. So what the hell was this buggy doing all the way out here?

  He drove up to it, stopped twenty, thirty feet away. He climbed down, and walked slowly and deliberately around it.

  It had accumulated dust. It hadn’t drifted, though. If the wheels had been in the same position for any time, the dust would have collected against one side or the other. This… had been driven here. Recently.

  Frank reached out. He hesitated, then dabbed his fingers on the frame. He felt solid metal, and jerked his hand away as if burned.

  This was ridiculous. But he was terrified. This shouldn’t be here. He sipped some water to slake his dry mouth, and clambered up the chassis so he could see the seat. The plastic chair bolted to the frame was identical to his own, except this one was cracked and then fixed with a line of sticky hab-repair patches. It was clear of dust. As if swept. And there: someone had put their hand on the read-outs and wiped them clean. He could see the marks made by four gloved fingers.

  He lowered himself down again, and checked the ground. There were faint scuff marks leading up the nearest channel.

  Someone was looking back at him from a rock step up on the promontory.

  They wore an XO suit. Hard body, integral helmet, back bulge of life support and entry hatch. Light-emitting areas front and top. It was difficult to interpret body language. The bulk of the insulation layer hid a lot of tells. But the way Frank felt he was being stared at made it feel like he wasn’t exactly expected, either.

  It probably only lasted a few seconds, but it felt like forever.

  Then they turned and walked out of sight. Were they climbing back down into the channel and coming to meet him? If they were as real as the buggy was real, possibly.

  What was he going to do? He had moments to decide. He could simply drive off into the distance. He’d leave tracks for the other person to follow, just as he’d followed theirs. He could… disable their buggy—he knew how these things worked, and a few solid blows to the instrument panel would strand the driver out on the plain and condemn them to certain death. He could attack the other astronaut and kill them, then take their buggy—he had an empty trailer, after all.

  He took another sip of water and stayed rooted to the spot. He still couldn’t quite believe what was happening. His hand had fallen automatically to the nut runner on his belt. It was weighted wrong as a cosh, but it was partly metal and he could get a decent swing behind it. He might actually be better off with an actual rock, given he could lift three times the weight he could on Earth. But being greeted by someone with a huge boulder held over his head wasn’t going to start friendly relations any time soon.

  Geez, Frank. You can’t gut a fish and yet you’re still thinking about bashing another guy’s brains in. You don’t have to kill everyone just because you’re scared. You don’t know who this is. You don’t know why they’re here. You don’t know anything about them. You can just talk to them instead.

  Then the time for equivocation was over. The spacesuited figure emerged from the wind of the canyon and walked towards him. Slowly. With their hands obviously empty. They reached up and tapped the side of their helmet, twice. No comms. Frank had been taught the same hand signal.

  The face behind the glass became apparent. A man. Beard, long and patchy. Lean like Frank. Leaner even. Gaunt, almost. Eyes recessed but wide and pale. He didn’t seem… well? Frank hadn’t looked in a mirror for months. There might be more similarities between them than he was allowing for.

  This was the first time the other man had the opportunity to see him properly, too. He took his time studying Frank, his gaze skittering between face and suit and buggy and trailer and back. He seemed to be going through the same mental gymnastics as Frank.

  Frank could still turn and run: gun his motors and drive away, try and obscure his route home by finding some rock to break up his tracks. He didn’t do that, even though he thought about doing it right up until the moment they met, halfway between the bluff and the buggy.

  Frank looked at the contents of the man’s utility belt, and he had almost no equipment hanging off the carabiners. Not a nut runner, not a tablet, just a cloth pouch that probably held some patches, and some looped cargo straps. There was something off here. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but Frank instinctively took a step back.

  The man used his index finger to indicate “you-me-touch-helmets”. It was Frank’s last chance to bolt.

  He could also get his strike in first, especially if the man had no comms—but what if it was a trick, to get Frank within blade range? That was prison-him talking, but prison-him had kept him alive this far. Maybe he should listen to that guy a little bit more, and judge him a little less.

  OK, let’s calm the fuck down. This guy isn’t going to try and shank me. He might even be another con from a Panopticon jail. Someone like Frank, shanghaied in another XO game.

  To test that hypothesis, Frank held his fist out, a little to one side. The man frowned at it, and then at Frank. Not a con. A dap would have been second nature. Could this man, whatever he was, whoever he was, be actual XO?

  XO. On Mars. This could go very, very badly for Frank.

  The man held out his hand, for an actual handshake, between equals. Frank stared at it, then took it hesitantly. The man was real. Not a ghost.

  What was he going to do? Play it by ear. See what the score was. The guy had no comms. Frank could afford to try and find out what was going on before deciding anything.

  As they leaned forward and touched helmets, Frank put his hand on his nut runner and unclipped it, keeping it down and unseen by his side.

  “Hey,” said the man. “You Brack?”

  What was Frank supposed to say here? The other man clearly knew about him, about MBO, about everything, while Frank didn’t even know what this man was doing on Mars.

  “I’m Brack, yes.”

  “Sweet. You got everything set up over there? Everything working fine?”

 
“We’re good,” said Frank. Then added spontaneously, “All of us.”

  “All of you?” There was a telling pause. “OK. Lost track of which sol it was. I’m just picking up gear. That’s what you’re doing, right?”

  Of course, Frank’s buggy had a trailer. This man’s didn’t. If he was picking up gear, where was his?

  “Stuff didn’t land where it was supposed to,” said Frank. “Missing a drop for the NASA guys. Said I’d go and check out a possible from the satellite.”

  That was plausible, right? If the locator beacon was offline, then it was the only way they could do it.

  The man seemed to accept that without a problem. “Tell me about it. Strewn around like fucken’ confetti.”

  “Something like that.” Was that useful information? Yes. There was another XO mission on Mars, suffering the same problems as his had. Frank suddenly realized what he’d just thought, and he clammed up. Another XO mission. Fuck.

  “You got everything in the end, though?” asked the man. “You got everything you needed?”

  All that extra cargo: they weren’t spares, replacements for missing or destroyed deliveries. They weren’t for MBO at all. He’d stolen this other guy’s kit. Other guy: it was a whole other crew at a whole other base. Habs. Panels. Wheels and fuel cells. Food. He’d beggared them.

  “You OK?”

  This questioning, this real-time questioning, was hard. Frank was used to some thinking time, and then a delay between answer and next message.

  “Yeah, fine. Fine.” Goddammit, XO. They’d known what he was doing. He’d reported back the manifest of each drop as he brought it in. They could have said stop, at any time. They hadn’t.

  “And you got everything working?”

  That was the second time he’d been asked that. “Eventually.”

  “Greenhouse? Comms?”

  Now Frank’s whole skin was itching. “Like I said, we’re good.”

  “Sweet,” said the other man again.

  All the traffic had been entirely one-way so far. The man, this stranger on Frank’s Mars, had told him precisely nothing. Except his mere presence, which spoke volumes.