Sophia McDougall - Mars Evacuees

Kayleigh led a round of slightly hysterical cheering – theoretically for the crew, though really everyone just felt like clapping and screaming. The crew lurched around the main passenger cabin looking completely exhausted, making sure we’d all got oxygen masks, for acclimatising. The oxygen canisters were pretty big, but they didn’t feel heavy.

There was a thump from the escape shuttle where Carl was still shut up in disgrace. I imagined that was him trying to get out, or at least doing an experimental jump around and hitting the ceiling.

When we had the oxygen masks fixed over our faces, the doors opened and a blast of thin air flowed in. It was cold but as you know, I was used to that. And slower than we wanted, but faster than the crew wanted, we all spilled down the ramp on to the surface of Mars.

Beagle Base was a cluster of domes and windmills and drum-shaped buildings on stilts. The hills above the base were smooth, abrupt lumps with polished red sides, still bald, though there was thin blackish-green arctic grass growing on the plain.

But we weren’t that bothered about where we were going to be living at first. What we saw at once was that you would never, ever for a single second be able to forget you were on a different world. The sun was too small and too pale. The horizon was too close, and too curved. I don’t think people would ever have thought the world was flat if they’d started off on Mars.

And the gravity. It was amazing . It felt like we’d suddenly got superpowers, because in a way we had . I jumped as high as I could. This turned out to be as high as my own head. It was almost as exciting as being able to fly, but kind of scary too, because that’s a long way to come down. But I descended slowly enough to see the red horizon settling lazily back into place around me, and Josephine looking up at me and then taking off herself. Soon everyone was doing it, three hundred kids all bouncing up and down on the alien plain like bubbles in a pan of boiling water.

Then there was a horrible blaring noise overhead and everyone jumped or shrieked or giggled or fell over according to character. Until then we hadn’t noticed the three little flying silver ball-things that had whooshed over from behind a cluster of red rocks and were now spinning around in a triangle formation above us. They shouted in one deep, annoyed, American voice: ‘You will get in a line! You will be silent! You are all Exo-Defence Force cadets now! You will act like it!’

So we did that, at least the getting-in-a-line part, and we were quick about it too because those things were scary.

‘EDF Goads,’ said Josephine. ‘I read about them…’

One of the Goads plunged down out of the pinkish sky and hovered in front of us, shimmering. In the shimmer we could see the face of an old, angry-looking man, who bawled at Josephine: ‘SILENCE!’ And then it swooped off along the line and bawled the same thing at a lot of other people, with variations like ‘STAND UP STRAIGHT!’ and ‘TAKE THAT SMIRK OFF YOUR FACE!’ and one of the other Goads swept along behind it translating into various languages and sounding just as furious whether it was yelling ‘ SILENZIO !’ or ‘ CHEN MO !’ even though it was automated.

A large, strange shape was emerging over one of the hills; something huge and black with four legs, a bit like a horse and a bit like a dog and a bit like a monkey – except that it didn’t have a head, because being a robot, it didn’t need one. Astride its back was the man whose face we’d seen in the Goad. He was actually robot himself from the knees down. You could see this because even though he had to be at least seventy-five, and even though we were on Mars and it was chilly to say the least, he was wearing very short shorts.

He looked down at us from his steed, which you almost expected to rear up dramatically against the skyline.

‘I AM COLONEL DIRK CLEAVER.’ He was very loud, even louder than Carl, but even if he hadn’t been, the three little Goads which were now whirling above him amplified his voice all over the Martian plain.

‘And there are some things you should know about me,’ he went on just as loudly. ‘I never wanted to wind up stuck on this rock, babysitting the likes of you, because some snivelling pen-pusher thinks I’m too old to fight. But since I am here, by God, YOU WILL BECOME THE FINEST FIGHTING FORCE OF SEVEN-TO-SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLDS THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN. Those invisible scumbuckets will quail in terror of you. But first, you will quail in terror of me !’

I was already quailing, maybe not quite in terror , but certainly in general Oh-God-What-Is-This-ness. I sneaked a glance at Josephine. She was not quailing at all, but she was staring into the distance in a resigned kind of way, as if she was sizing up what the next four years were going to be like.

Dirk Cleaver pointed. ‘There are your barracks; I want you back out here in uniform in twenty minutes!’ For a moment he looked vaguely disgusted. ‘The civilian robots will show you what to do.’ He didn’t sound as if he thought much of the civilian robots. I was still keen to see what they’d be like; though the thing the Colonel was riding was exciting enough to be going on with. He shouted, ‘Yah!’ and the thing responded just as if it had been an animal; it charged down the hill with him sitting easily upright astride it. The headlessness was creepier when it moved – it could go in any direction without hesitating or looking where it was going. Sometimes, when there was a big rock or something in the way, it would go straight from galloping like a horse to moving sideways like a crab. Once he was down on the plain, the Colonel rode along the line of children with his whirling Goads sweeping after him, as we all tried to quail in suitable terror. ‘Go on! Get moving! March!’

So we marched off as best we could towards Beagle Base. Colonel Cleaver’s voice continued to yell at us out of the Goads, ‘Quick march! Left, right!’ while another robot came to meet us, hovering above the ground like the Goads. Except this one was shaped like a sunflower with a smiley face and playing a jingly tune.

‘Hi there!’ it said in a friendly way. ‘ Hola chicos ! Namaste doston ! Nimen hao ! Wow, you’re a long way from home! Welcome to Beagle Base! Why don’t we take a look around?’

‘You will become living weapons!’ roared the Colonel. ‘You will be disciplined! You will be strong! You will be ruthless !’

‘We’re going to have a fun time together!’ giggled the sunflower robot placidly.

‘I don’t think I like it here,’ said Josephine.

The Sunflower led us between a couple of buildings on stilts and down a tunnel into a huge, misty-looking transparent dome. Inside it was all green and warm and lovely, and full of growing things. Little robots skittered about between beds of plants, spraying stuff on them or picking cauliflowers and beans while bees hummed overhead. The Sunflower led us through the gardens, rocking gently from side to side as it hovered, talking in Mandarin and then Spanish in the same happy tone.

‘Look at all the healthy food we’re growing!’ it said when it went back to English. ‘And see, over there are some EDF scientists called ecologists ! They’re helping to make Mars a safe, green, living planet for us all!’

It was true; on the other side of the dome, standing between banks of strange plants that didn’t look like anything I’d seen on Earth, there were some actual humans. Some of them were wearing lab coats and some were in overalls, but all had the Exo-Defence Force comet symbol on the chest. They were directing the little agricultural robots around or comparing results on their tablets. One of them was a woman riding a vehicle like a more delicate, spidery version of the Colonel’s Beast. It carried her over the crops by elegantly placing its pointed feet into tiny spaces between plants, not even bending a leaf. All these people ignored us completely – we were the Colonel’s and the robots’ responsibility. The beds of vegetables opened out around a big oval sports field framed by a running track. It had been such a long time since I had seen anything like that which wasn’t covered in snow.