Sophia McDougall - Mars Evacuees

There was a flash of nasty violet light and the drones all dropped with a clatter on to the rocks. The valley was suddenly silent, and there was a faint burnt, metallic taste in the thin air.

Th saaa scrambled out free of Carl, their tendrils quivering in all directions and their colours flashing so fast and messily they were difficult to look at.

‘What if they had not stopped?!’ they cried in an unusually high-pitched voice, as the rest of us ran over. ‘What if they hadn’t seen you in time? What if your temperature had not masked mine?!’

Carl blinked. ‘Well, that would have been bad,’ he agreed.

‘You could have died , Kuya!’ cried Noel, torn between admiration and horror.

‘You have my ushaal-thol-faa ,’ said Th saaa formally, making an obvious effort to get their colours under control. They extended three tentacles and Carl, who hadn’t hesitated before diving between Th saaa in front of four killer robots, did hesitate now. But then he took hold of Th saaa ’s arms and let Th saaa hoist him to his feet.

‘No big,’ he said. But, though I really don’t think he’d thought about what he was doing while he was doing it, he couldn’t help thinking about it now . ‘That really was pretty cool of me, actually,’ he confessed, reaching for his oxygen cylinder and taking a deep breath. ‘Take that, Captain Mendez, I am not just about doing things for the spotlight.’

‘That point would be a lot stronger if you hadn’t actually said it out loud ,’ said Josephine, in exasperation, though she was smiling.

But it was hard to stay cheerful. Mars seemed so cold and unwelcoming and full of things that wanted to hurt us just then. We climbed back on to Monica and scuttled onwards as fast as we could.

Carl cleared his throat. ‘I thought –’ he began, and broke off. ‘I really did think it might be Colonel Cleaver. But we’ll find him soon, I guess.’

‘Where did those things come from?’ wondered Noel.

‘Some of the Auroras have them,’ said Carl, his expression tight.

‘So there has to be a ship, somewhere…?’

I could see what was upsetting Carl. ‘Yes. But it has to be… crashed, or malfunctioning,’ I said. ‘Or they’d be here. Those things would have transmitted back that they were dealing with something.’

‘Yeah. I just… I really hope the pilot of the Aurora was all right,’ Carl said.

I thought about Th saaa ’s wrecked ship, and the bodies Th saaa had had to drag away. The Aurora could have shot down the Morror ship, perhaps; and the Morrors could have shockrayed the Aurora as it fell. The Aurora might have limped as far towards Zond as it could before dropping on to the rocks. Or, on the other hand, it could have been Space Locusts. But I didn’t feel like saying any of it aloud, or asking Th saaa about it. I was so tired, and none of it would make any difference to the fact we had to keep going.

‘And so those drones were left roaming the sky, hunting for Morrors,’ said Th saaa softly.

‘Yeah, but look,’ said Carl. ‘Don’t worry. They were just robots. People won’t do that to you. We’ll make sure they know you’re a kid. They won’t hurt you. They’ll work something out with your guys and you’ll be back home in no time.’

Th saaa rippled black and indigo. ‘They have never had a Morror prisoner before. They cannot waste the chance. They will want to find out… everything they can.’

No one had a very good answer to that.

I hadn’t really been thinking of Th saaa as our prisoner any more, because we weren’t getting on so badly now and because they could technically have run off whenever they liked. Except that would have almost certainly meant they suffocated or starved, so as choices go that one didn’t really count.

Our last afternoon of travel was as uneventful as an afternoon can be when you are riding a robot spider along with your Alien of Uncertain Status towards a questionable destination with the oxygen running out and, by the end, no more food. We were crossing another great bare plain as a blazing blue sunset spilled into the pink sky. Fine, fine dust rose under Monica’s feet in little spiralling puffs like flares of gas (it also got you very dirty). And there ahead at last was Mount Olympus, the biggest mountain in the solar system, rising above the atmosphere, so huge it was as if part of the sky had been walled off. We rode through the first hours of the night, the two knobbly little moons, and endless snowdrifts of stars. Then we draped the remains of the tent under Monica’s legs and Th saaa lent us the Paralashath to keep us warm.

‘Can you play something, Josephine?’ I asked, because the silence was getting to me again.

Josephine nodded and played something I’d never heard before, more bluesy than those heartbroken songs she’d played in the Labyrinth of Night, but more delicate and glittery than the actual jazz she’d played back at Beagle, and it kept floating up high and sounded a bit like what being in a tiny, isolated group of people sitting under all those incredible stars is like.

‘What was that?’ I asked when she was finished.

‘I’m going to call it “Martian Sunset”,’ said Josephine.

‘Oh, you made it up? It was lovely.’

‘ Yoooooou made it up?!’ Th saaa flickered turquoise and orange, and seemed astonished .

Josephine raised an eyebrow at them, though I’m sure they wouldn’t have got what that meant. ‘What? You know we have music, right? Did you think we just dug it out of the ground like potatoes?’ She hesitated. ‘What does it sound like to you? ’

‘To me it sounds… very… bare. With no colour or movement or shalvulu – temperature changes,’ Th saaa said.

‘We’ll introduce you to musical theatre when we get home,’ said Josephine, a little crossly.

‘…But I think I understand , I was going to say. You are too quick with everything,’ said Th saaa, and reached for the Paralashath. ‘Come here,’ they added, and curled a tentacle around Josephine’s wrist and guided her hand to the glowing surface, steering her fingertip in a pattern that might have been like the sigils we’d seen in the Morror ship.

‘Now, play again.’

Josephine’s dislike of doing what she was told briefly warred with her desire to see what would happen. Curiosity won and she put the harmonica back to her lips and started playing ‘Martian Sunset’ again.

The Paralashath answered the music. Colours and patterns streamed out of it, rippling over the sand and faint drifts of shalvulu quivering on our skin. Josephine’s playing hitched and her eyes went wide with amazement, and the colours faltered for a second, turned white and grey. She got back in control again and they steadied and strengthened with arcs of deep blue rising with the high notes and quivers of crimson pulsing with the rhythm over the ground.

Th saaa said, ‘Ah, yes … I do see,’ and their colours started to sync up with the Paralashath’s colours, as they always did, but this time the hues were from the music.

Josephine actually looked a little teary-eyed by the time she finished playing again. ‘That was…’ she said rather hoarsely. ‘…Thank you.’

‘I wasn’t sure it would work,’ Th saaa said modestly.

We made an early start the next day, seeing as how there wasn’t any food left.

‘Was your planet destroyed, Th saaa ?’ asked Josephine quietly, as the sun came up. ‘You said it was colder. And all of this… it isn’t just because you ran out of space for everyone at home, is it.’