Sophia McDougall - Mars Evacuees

For a moment, I was face-to-face with something like a salamander with a mane of glassy fur, its head hanging impossibly in mid-air where the invisible fabric still cloaked the rest of it. Its eyes were huge and transparent and veined with subtle colour, like glass paperweights.

Then the Goldfish swooped down like the wrath of God. It came flashing and making a howling noise I would never have thought it could make. And it did the zapping thing it had done to us, only much, much harder.

The Morror fell over and didn’t get up.

‘You killed it!’ said Noel. ‘It wasn’t doing anything! That’s not fair!’

I would have told him to shut up, except that I still felt too sick and trembly from having touched the thing. Honestly, I wouldn’t have been too unhappy if the Morror was dead, because even if it was unfair, it wouldn’t have been our fault. It wouldn’t even have been the Goldfish’s fault really, seeing as it’s a robot and was only trying to protect us. And we wouldn’t have been stuck with a Morror that could go invisible when it wanted and might do anything. And what with being lost on the wrong planet already because of these guys, I don’t think it’s exactly surprising if I didn’t feel very friendly.

But then the Morror moved and I thought, Oh, this isn’t going to be that easy.

‘Oh, you only stunned it,’ said Noel, relieved.

‘MY AIM WAS NOT TO STUN IT, MY AIM WAS TO ELIMINATE IT,’ said the Goldfish, sounding completely deranged. And then it zapped it again.

This time nothing much happened, the Morror just made a sound like it was in pain, because it obviously was, and the Goldfish beeped in confusion and zapped it another time, and by this point it was fairly clear that the Goldfish was trying as hard as it could and only succeeding in hurting the thing.

‘We could probably kill it with rocks,’ suggested Carl.

So I said, ‘Oh for God’s sake, we are not killing anything with rocks; I’m pretty sure that is actually a war crime .’

‘It’s helpless, Goldfish,’ said Josephine quietly. ‘And it’s true: we’re soldiers. It’s a prisoner of war.’

‘You’re children ,’ insisted the Goldfish, still sounding pretty scary.

‘Exo-Defence Force cadets,’ said Carl, grudgingly.

The Goldfish thought for a moment. ‘TEACHER ROBOTS ARE NOT SUBJECT TO INTERNATIONAL MILITARY LAW,’ it concluded, and was about to have another zap before Noel flung himself in front of the Morror.

‘Stop it!’ he cried. ‘Stop hurting it! You’re being horrible!’

‘Killing it would be a waste,’ said Josephine. Her voice was oddly expressionless. ‘No one’s ever even seen a Morror before. And we’re going to leave the first live captive rotting somewhere on Tharsis? Without learning anything about it?’

The Goldfish made a frustrated electronic groaning sound and its eyes went back from red to blue. ‘Well kids, I think you might be biting off more than you can chew,’ it said brightly. ‘But it’s great to see you all compromising and working as a team! And if that Morror takes one step out of line…!’

There was a brief red flash in its eyes, but it backed off a bit.

‘Well, what now?’ said Carl.

So we stood there and stared at it. Or rather at its fallen, disembodied head, which was not getting any less creepy to look at.

‘We should get the rest of the invisible thing off,’ I said eventually. ‘We can’t have it running off in that thing.’

The invisible suit seemed more like a kind of sack than anything else; heaven knows how the Morror managed to walk around in it without tripping over all the time. I could sort of not quite see it out of the corner of my eye (the effect was starting to make me feel slightly sick), and the others couldn’t at all, but of course we could all feel it. It was very fine and silky and clingy under our hands as we dragged it off.

‘So that’s what they look like,’ breathed Carl.

‘That’s what this one looks like,’ corrected Josephine.

There was the first Morror human eyes had ever seen. The translucent mane covered its newt-like head, extended over its neck and shoulders, and stretched across its cheeks into tapering panels of shorter strands beneath its eyes. The mane wasn’t really fur , of course, it was made up of tendril-things, sort of like what sea anemones have. The strands of the mane got shorter and shorter as they approached bare skin, until they were just glossy round dots that spotted the Morror all over like a leopard, covering its chest and the six long, slender tentacles – three on each side – that hung from its shoulders. Between the dots… I suppose you’d have to call it grey, but such a complicated, mottled grey, sort of bluish or greenish or purplish, depending on how you looked at it. Each tentacle might have reached its knees, assuming it had them. But we couldn’t see what it had in the way of legs, because though it was bare from the waist up it was wearing a kind of long skirt made from stiff dark-red papery stuff.

Its eyes were shut, but I’d already seen them: as big as my fists, glossy and transparent round the edges and wells of deep black in the middle.

The Morror was still moaning quietly. It flicked up a couple of tentacles to cover its face, but it didn’t seem to be actually awake.

‘So, does this work on humans?’ Carl wondered, and put a fold of the invisibility cloak over his head and went, ‘ Wooo. Wooo .’ It worked very well, but it turned out that a headless boy capering about was one more thing than I could properly cope with right now.

‘Oh, bloody hell, don’t,’ I said. Everything around me got swimmy and floaty and I realised I might possibly be falling over. Then someone had got their arms round me and was making me sit down on a mossy rock.

‘You’re all right,’ said Josephine firmly. ‘You’re just in shock. Drink some of this.’

She was holding that silver bottle of perfume I’d seen on the Mélisande .

‘What’re you making me drink perfume for?’ I croaked, the higher intellectual functions being beyond me at present.

‘It’s not perfume,’ said Josephine. ‘It’s rum. It’s my dad’s hip flask. Have some, there’s a good girl.’

I did as I was told and Josephine patted my head approvingly, while Carl laughed in a way that suggested he might be a bit in shock himself. ‘We’ve got a Morror prisoner,’ he giggled, ‘and Josephine’s a twelve-year-old alkie…’

‘I’m nothing of the sort. I’m just extremely well prepared,’ sniffed Josephine, hugging her bag of peculiar objects proudly to her side. She passed Carl the little flask. ‘You’ll note it’s full .’

Carl had a little swig and then Josephine took it back and did the same, and Noel looked at her expectantly.

‘You’re not having any,’ Carl said flatly.

‘So, what, I’ve got to just stay in shock?’ Noel asked in indignation.

‘Yes,’ said the rest of us.

Something strange happened to the Morror. The tendrils of its mane rippled and flared, and colour pulsed through them, bands of purple and deep flame-orange that welled up in its leopard dots and swept across its skin. This freaked us all out except for Josephine, who put her chin into her hands and watched for a moment, then got out her tablet and started filming it.

‘Is it meant to do that?’ asked Noel anxiously.

‘Hey,’ said Carl. ‘Hey, Morror.’

The Morror keened quietly, and opened its eyes. There were faint threads of orange and purple in the transparency around its pupils.

‘Are you all right , Morror?’ Noel enquired.