“Mara, I didn’t copy that. Say again?” Reese asked.
“I said get the immune-boosters. Make sure you get it from the quarantine bay. Please, go back and get them before we leave.”
“Immune-boosters. Got it!” Reese yelled into the comm-link. “But what about the samples?” Reese asked.
“You don’t have them?”
“They’re at the lab,” Reese answered.
“Get what you can, but I need the immune-boosters. Hanson is sick. Get me as many as you can!” She and Hanson continued to run on the shifting ice.
“Got it,” Reese answered. “Luis is monitoring from above. He says you only have minutes. Do you copy? Mara?” Reese asked.
Reese felt a shudder work through the entire Hab. The rocking motions were getting more intense. Mara didn’t answer.
Dr. Aman looked outside the windows at the approaching destruction, hoping something hadn’t happened to them. “You can not be allowed to go out there.”
“You heard her. I’m going to the lab to get the immune-boosters and samples.”
“You do not have time. Look at it out there!”
“The booster is for Hanson,” she told him. “He’s sick. I need to get him one. And the samples!”
“The tanks are filling,” he said. “We might be able to make it if nobody else leaves. Hanson can fend for himself.”
“What about Mara?” Reese asked. “Are you going to just leave her?” Reese was disgusted at the thought. She turned and walked to the airlock and flipped the visor on her helmet down. “Our crewmate is out there on the surface and she needs our help.” She looked at the doctor with animosity. “I’m going.”
“Julian is warming up the engines. We are on standby for launch! Mara knew the risk she was taking!”
“We’re not leaving without her,” Reese shouted, and she left through the airlock as fast as she could.
Dr. Aman watched as she exited, and he stood near the controls for the launch sequence and the seismic monitors, keeping a close eye on both.
When Reese exited the doors to the exterior, she was astounded by what she saw. There were geysers of water shooting into space on the horizon and huge boulders of ice arcing through the black sky around her. She tried to stop looking at it and focus on her objective. She ran across the heaving landscape as smaller bits of ice fell around her, and she entered the lab in a hurry.
When she ran inside, she saw that it was even more of a mess than during the quarantine. Their equipment and belongings had been strewn across the room during the violent shaking. She found the few immune-boosters that remained in the lab. She grabbed them for Mara.
She turned for the sample room to grab as many of them that she could. But when she walked near to collect them, the light from the creatures illuminated it brighter than ever.
The samples were right there, almost within reach, but she couldn’t even see inside. She wasn’t sure she would be able to go in the room.
She started to approach, cautiously, but she didn’t get far. She flipped the shade on her visor down and she turned her head. Inching closer, step by step, the signals from the creatures pulsed and undulated with a tremendous glow as she came closer. The light intensified. She took several more steps, trying not to be afraid, but it had grown too bright.
She could feel the energy from the creatures. It was warm. Like pins and needles on her skin, she could feel the photons of light piercing her suit and her flesh. Even through her mask, through her suit, she could feel it. She was frightened by what she was experiencing. The experience was terrifying. She gave up. She knew she was not welcome there.
She was turning to leave when the room suddenly erupted with a blast of ice and water… The eruption was here. She ran to the airlock as the water began rushing through the room. The laboratory was being torn apart by erupting ice. She could feel the ground heaving and falling back down. She felt her body press into the floor, then she was thrown to the ceiling. The airlock had been driven open by the heaving ground. The compressed air inside the laboratory rushed out of the collapsed doors. She felt the lab depressurize. One of the doors at the airlock had blown itself free and sat crooked, giving her just enough room to escape. She crawled out of the crevice between the door and the frame with just barely enough space as the room was torn apart behind her. When she got outside, she ran as fast as she could.
From the exterior she could see the destruction approaching the landing site. She reached the airlock at the Hab and began frantically pushing the buttons that would allow her inside. As she pressed the button over and over she turned to look again at what was approaching. The lab was being swallowed by collapsing ice and shooting geysers. There were erupting jets of water and boulders of ice flying up into the sky just meters from where she was standing. Then the laboratory itself crumbled into the expanding fissure. It fell into the crevasse that had opened below, and the light from the creatures disappeared into the darkness, illuminating the ice with their powerful light as they fell along with a mix of structural panels and supports and lab equipment. It was complete chaos, and as quickly as it had started, it was over, and the samples were gone.
She had been away from the Hab only minutes, but it had been costly. She squeezed between the doors of the airlock as they opened, and she burst through to the inside. When she entered, Dr. Aman was already punching the launch sequence into the onboard computer.
“What about Mara?” she gasped, her heavy breathing barely allowing her to speak. “She’s still out there!”
Dr. Aman ignored her and focused on the launch vectors.
“Where’s Julian?” she asked again. She was still breathing hard. “Does Julian know what you are doing.” Her chest was heaving labored breaths.
There was no response from the doctor. His focus was on the buttons and inputs while he checked the launch calculations, and he wasn’t acknowledging her. Reese looked up at the monitors that showed the readings from the seismometers.
“What about Mara?” she asked again in a more demanding voice. She could feel herself panicking. Dr. Aman refused to say anything, solely focused on getting the launch sequence entered.
Julian came into the room, and he stared at Reese for a moment. “It’s now or never,” he said.
Reese looked at him with concerned eyes, questioning his decision.
“The eruption is here,” Julian said. “If we don’t leave right now, we don’t make it.”
“But Mara is outside!” Reese yelled.
“She’s not going to make it,” he told her.
Reese stared at him in anguish, and the ground beneath them jostled one more time. She was nearly thrown from her feet.
“I’m sorry,” Julian said, yelling above the noisy alarms and falling equipment. “The eruption is here. We’ve waited as long as we can. It’s time.”
Reese looked at the monitors again. She could see the seismic readings, and she watched them converging on their location. She had just seen the laboratory ripped to shreds just outside, and she knew they were next.
She nodded her head, and her face drooped immediately, knowing they were leaving Mara. Dr. Aman hit a single red button on the control panel, and he turned toward them, and their eyes locked for a moment. A series of numbers suddenly flashed on the monitor with a message. It read: “Launch in 20 seconds.”
Dr. Aman sat down at the command seat and buckled himself in. Reese watched through a state of panic and confusion. Then Julian jumped into one of the four seats and began to buckle himself in. By then the monitor had dropped to 10 seconds.
“Shit,” Reese said when she realized how little time she had. She raced to her seat and began to buckle herself next to the doctor. She looked at the empty seat that was supposed to belong to Mara. She snapped the final buckle into place at her shoulders.
Reese closed her eyes in preparation for the boosters to fir
e and send them rapidly into the sky. Dr. Aman still hadn’t said a word. There was nothing they could do to stop the rockets now. The sound of the boosters igniting began to overtake the room. The numbers on the monitor made the final countdown — three, two, one…
Sol 17; Mission time — 05:08
Mara and Hanson tried to get to their feet as one of the crevices widened right where Hanson was standing. He slipped into the opening. Only his hands gripped a razor-sharp edge of ice, and his body limply dangled over the edge of a forbiddingly deep chasm.
Mara heard the wince of pain in her helmet just as he had fallen. She turned and saw his hands gripping for the surface. She bent down and grabbed at them to bring him up. The shaking ground made it more difficult than it should have been.
Then, in a final act of cruelty, the far side of the narrow crevice began to close in towards him, filling the gap that he had fallen into. Hanson was stuck between two impossibly large masses of ice, dangling between them, sure to be crushed when they met.
His only hope was to get out before they closed. Mara grabbed and pulled with all her strength. It wasn’t enough. Even in the low gravity, the ground was too unreliable, the weight of the suit and equipment, it was all too much for her to overcome.
Hanson was weak. She stayed with him, watching the crevasse close. She refused to leave. She knelt before him as a house-sized boulder of ice raced over their heads again, certain to crash only meters away. She did her best to ignore the flying debris. She was watching Hanson lose his life, helpless to stop it.
“Get out of here!” Hanson screamed. “I mean it, GO! NOW! Mara. Leave me!”
She was frozen. How could she turn her back and leave him? She felt a determination that she had never felt before. She had accepted her fate. Her fate was to be here with Hanson. Losing him was not an option.
“Mara, please!” he pleaded. “Please get to the Hab!”
The crevasse began to close on him. Massive blocks of ice were unrelentingly closing on his body. It was close enough that he could kick to the other side.
Leverage. He instinctively pushed against the other side as it closed, and the ice that was so certain to squeeze the life out of him had suddenly given him a way to push himself out. He stretched his feet to the other side and pressed against the ice as it inched near. He rose between the ice masses as they shut on him, and he stammered onto the surface unharmed.
They shared a momentary look of disbelief. Hanson took to his feet, startled to be alive, and the two masses of ice crushed together beneath them and sent ocean liquid and ice shooting into the vacuous atmosphere right where they met.
Mara and Hanson stood near, their backs to the Hab, watching the ice shooting out of what had just been a massive crack in the ice. They watched the destruction in awe, unsure of how they were still alive. The wall of water was rising right in front of them just meters away into the sky, and with enough force to send it straight into orbit.
Then a light appeared out of nowhere from behind them, and they saw their shadows appear against the wall of water. The dark silhouettes danced and flickered upon the erupting water as they could from only one thing. It was the unmistakable light from the capsule’s rockets. The boosters had lit the entire ground and the geysers around them, illuminating the terrain from a low angle, and it cast awkwardly long, tenuous shadows of light on the ground in all directions.
Mara turned to see the return capsule ascending into the black sky above and gently arc into orbit. The capsule rose silently in the vacuum, and as it did, it left a white streak of water vapor behind it, the remnants of the hydrogen and oxygen reaction that powered it. The cloud of vapor barely moved in the windless sky. Twinkling light from the booster rockets lit the vapor trail and continued to cast flickering patterns and shadows upon the ice around them as it faded into the blackness.
“Dr. Aman!” Mara thought as she watched the capsule ascend. They watched the capsule soar into the distance, leaving them abandoned amid the destruction. They were more resigned to their fate now than ever. There was little hope of escape. The massive geyser and jets of water were mere meters away. The ground was convulsing and heaving giant portions of itself onto the surface and into the sky around them. The capsule ascended further into the heavens and disappeared over the horizon, and they were now the only two souls on the moon.
CHAPTER 23
Sol 17; Mission time - 05:14
“Aman!” Mara yelled into her comm. “You can’t just leave us!” she
screamed.
Reese responded. “Mara, I’m sorry,” she yelled. “Can you get Hanson to the Zephyr? We can meet you in orbit.”
“Nice of you to ask now… The whole ice shelf is breaking apart. We can’t find solid footing anywhere!”
“I’m sorry!” Reese yelled again.
Mara could hear the sound of the capsule’s rocket engines in the headset as Reese spoke to her. She would have to make it to the Zephyr with Hanson, but he was struggling. The motion of the trembling ice, and the constantly shifting footing, and the ice falling all around them; all were making the return seem impossible.
Mara saw that Hanson was descending further into his illness. She grabbed his arm and threw it over her shoulders, struggling with his weight, and then she stammered onward with him. Finding even ground was impossible. There were cracks everywhere. She would let go of him to climb ledges that were cropping up around them, and she would help him over where she needed. They went over obstacles, around boulders, and with chunks of ice still falling in the distance around them.
Minute by agonizing minute they approached the Zephyr. Hanson was keeping up, but his breathing had become labored; he was struggling to climb some of the larger ice features. Mara was having to help him climb over several projections in the ice. She could see the airlock on the Zephyr now, agonizingly close. The eruption was holding steady, and they were finally far enough to be safe from the flying debris.
They stood with their backs to the rig, just tens of meters away. The ocean beneath was erupting into space as a cataclysmic fountain of ice and water less than a kilometer away. It formed a wall of water and ice a hundred kilometers high, spewing the belly of the moon into space with unimaginable force. A display of such magnitude, made by colossal planetary forces, could hardly be witnessed anywhere else in the solar system. Only the King of the planets could contribute to such destruction, and on such a scale.
Whatever had caused it, the ocean was spewing its secrets into the heavens. Standing long enough to watch it was mesmerizing, and the power haunting in its raw, unyielding, uncontrollable certainty. It was beautiful.
They stood as the only witness to the awesomeness of the destructive power. Ocean fluids rose high into orbit and froze there. They formed a billion crystallized pinpoints of light in the sky. When the ice-crystals reached their zenith above them, they were caught in the feeble sunlight and revealed their true numbers in a spectacular twinkling of light.
From behind them, the sun had illuminated the marvel in its dim light and created a spectacle of lights against the black backdrop of space. The vision from the surface of the moon was one of pure angelic beauty; an atmospheric glittering of twinkling lights and fractured ice high in space above them. It was an amazing sight that had been mercifully salvaged from the forces of destruction that had made it possible. They spared a few seconds to see it transform the sky in front of them and appreciate the raw beauty.
Hanson reached for Mara and they sauntered toward the Zephyr. She remained ahead of him but was certain not to leave him far behind. She examined the ship from the outside for any signs of damage from the eruption, looking for a reason it wouldn’t launch. She saw none, and relief came to her face as they approached closer.
“Hanson, please tell me you can launch this thing,” she asked.
Hanson’s voice was weak and his breathing labored. “Yeah, of course
I can,” he said. “It’s mostly automated. Let me catch my breath, then we’ll go,” he said. He bent over, anxious to climb the stairs, unable to move.
“I don’t think we have that much time,” she said. She scurried behind him and forced him to keep moving.
Hanson stammered as she pushed him, but he made the ground necessary to get on board. With the eruption behind them and ice falling from the skies, he lurched into the Zephyr more slowly than Mara would have liked.
Hanson took a step inside and the emotions and illness caught up to him at once, hitting him in the stomach. He was struck with an immense sense of grief knowing he was the only survivor. He stammered and then fell just behind Mara, and she rushed to his tired body just inside the door.
He could barely help himself. She hurried down the ramp past EUNICE, still hanging in the darkened drill chamber. She went directly to the med bay. She had nearly taken all the immune boosters on her way to the crawlers, but she knew she had left some behind. Most of them had been lost in the fissure with the miners. She grabbed the remaining boosters and prepared one more for Hanson.
She lowered herself toward him and administered the booster directly through his suit. Hanson sat with his back to the wall, looking outside where they had come in, and taking labored breaths of air. Sweat was accumulating on his pale skin. Mara could see he was not as advanced as Johan, but he was still progressing.
She needed to get him further inside, and she helped him up the ramp. He got to his feet and stumbled through the corridors of the rig, bent over in pain, clearly feeling the side-effects of his infection. Fever was setting in. His face was showing heavy beads of sweat. His hair was wet with perspiration and was sticking to his forehead. Mara worried that with every moan of pain the end was near.
She hurried him through as fast as she could, struggling with his disorientation. The floor of the drill chamber was no sanctuary for the heaving ice. It continued to tremble and buckle with the vibrations of the eruption. The sub, hanging over the drill hole, swung back and forth inside the darkened chamber like a pendulum. Occasional sparks from the nearby equipment would flare and light the drill chamber and EUNICE inside it. The sub looked like a shiny messenger from the deep, a harbinger of the devastation it had brought with it.
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