Sophia McDougall - Mars Evacuees

‘They’re alive. And you saved their lives.’

‘I didn’t really. That was all Josephine; I’d never even have thought to go off on my own and… Mum, my friends, are they here? I want to go and see them.’

Mum didn’t try to stop me climbing out of the bed, and propped me up when I put my feet on the ground and got wobbly.

‘Why do we need so much gravity?’ I complained. ‘Completely over the top.’

We shuffled out of the room and into a corridor. I thought of something. ‘Can I,’ I said, ‘have tea and beans on toast?’

Mum laughed. ‘Well – in principle, of course you can. But finding the right kind of baked beans and tea in America…’

‘…has got to be easier than on Mars, ’ I said.

‘True. Yes, then.’

‘Spaghetti carbonara would do in the meantime.’

A hovering hospital robot came round the turn of the corridor. Someone was hanging on to it with both hands, letting themselves be pulled along, bare feet skidding on the ground. The robot did not seem happy about having a passenger; it twitched as we saw it, and the person fell off. But they jumped up for another go, letting out a cry of, ‘WOOHOO…!’

It was Carl, obviously.

‘Leave the robot alone,’ said Mum. ‘You’ll break it.’

Carl saluted my mum, which was a weird thing to witness, but Carl seemed to get a strange kick out of saluting people. ‘A man from the EDF came into my room and told me I was a hero,’ he said. ‘In which case, a ride on a hospital robot is not that much to ask, is it?’

I couldn’t help but think that whoever had said that to Carl had been very, very unwise, but my mother only said, ‘You’ve got a point,’ and let him latch on to the robot for one more swoop along the corridor.

‘So hey,’ he said to me breathlessly, coming back. ‘You took forever to wake up.’

I suppose, compared to the kid I’d seen jumping into the ocean months ago, he looked terrible; too thin and too pale and covered in bruises where he wasn’t covered in bandages. Compared to me , though, he looked in unreasonably good shape. ‘How come you’re so lively?’ I said.

‘Because I am a hero ,’ said Carl, grinning. ‘Eh, I was as limp as a rag a few hours ago, but you get over it. I’ve just been really bored. And my parents aren’t here yet. And the Goldfish’s been nosing about, and I don’t trust it not to give me a physics quiz. No respect for heroes, that fish.’

‘Where’s Noel?’

‘I’ll show you. He was knackered, though.’ Carl led us through a set of double doors to a room halfway down another stretch of corridor. ‘Oh, no, the Goldfish’s got him.’

I peered round the door. Noel was still curled up in bed. The Goldfish was hovering over him, but it wasn’t teaching him anything. It was singing gently, the Chinese song it had sung to me back on Beagle Base.

We tiptoed past so that we wouldn’t disturb Noel and the Goldfish wouldn’t notice we were there.

A soft play of coloured lights was marbling the white paint of a wall outside another room.

A crisp voice from inside said, ‘Interesting. But what is it for ?’

‘It’s art , Lena, I already told you. Ow.’

‘It would be worth examining the internal workings.’

‘You will not take it to bits , it’s mine. Ow.’

Josephine’s fingers were clasped protectively over the Paralashath lying on her chest. She looked smaller in the bed, and even more battered and fragile than I’d remembered. It might have been partly that her hair was combed and styled and so took up less space. A sombre young woman was just finishing the last plait, Josephine wincing all the time.

‘This is Lena,’ she greeted us. ‘She has no soul and she tortures young girls.’

‘Nice to meet you,’ said Lena gravely, rising from her chair. She seemed to keep on rising for some time; she must have been six foot two at least. She wore little glasses and a dark suit, and her hair in a chignon, even though I knew she was only eighteen. She did look a bit like Josephine around the eyes and forehead, but I couldn’t imagine Josephine ever growing up to be that big, or that tidy, or so composed and still and unfidgety. Lena shook everyone’s hands.

‘Lena, this is Carl,’ said Josephine. ‘He can fly a spaceship through a cloud of Vshomu and come out the other side.’

‘And I am the first person to do a wee on the Acidalia Planitia ,’ said Carl happily.

‘Oh, for God’s sake. He is also disgusting, but we have to put up with that. Noel is a lot less gross, but sadly he isn’t here right now to balance Carl out; he was the first one to spot a Vshomu.’

‘And he stopped the Goldfish hurting Th saaa ,’ I said.

Josephine smiled up at me. ‘This is Alice,’ she said more quietly. ‘She’s handy with duct tape when you’ve been partially eaten or exploded. But mainly she stops people going crazy or giving up.’

For a moment I had the weirdest feeling I was going to cry, and I didn’t know why.

‘Duct tape is always good,’ said Lena.

‘This is Josephine, Mum,’ I said. ‘She worked out why the Morrors were on Mars and she finds giant robot spiders and builds flamethrowers, and she’s my best friend.’

Lena frowned. ‘Josephine, you didn’t mention anything about a flamethrower.’

‘If you didn’t want me to build flamethrowers, you shouldn’t have taught me the basic principles when I was six,’ said Josephine. ‘It worked well.’

‘ Everything seems to have worked out well,’ I said.

‘Of course it did,’ said Josephine serenely. ‘I was never in any doubt it would.’

And we laughed, because that was hysterically funny, and Josephine added, ‘Alice. Let’s go outside.’

So we did that. There was some talk of wheelchairs for both Josephine and me, which neither of us wanted. But I managed to shuffle along on my own feet leaning on Mum, and Lena simply hoisted Josephine over one shoulder and walked off with her. Josephine protested heartily. Lena ignored her until she gave up.

The hospital grounds weren’t particularly beautiful. There were a lot of military vehicles and tarmac. But there were some flower beds and roses growing in them. And the sky was bright blue.

‘Isn’t it sunnier than it used to be?’ I said as Lena plonked Josephine down on a low wall.

‘The Morrors,’ said Mum, tilting her face up to the sunlight. ‘They said they’d let more light through. They’re doing it. And it’s summer.’

Later there was this whole business where we got medals for Conspicuous Gallantry, and of course that was nice but it’s not really the point of the story so I’m going to skip it. It only happened because this one newspaper ran a campaign of headlines saying things like ‘Reward the Plucky Kids of Mars!’ and people got a bit hysterical. And Dad always particularly hated that newspaper, and since then some human and a Suth- laaa Morror fell in love and now it’s doing a campaign about OUTLAW MORROR–HUMAN MARRIAGE SHAM.

So the medal thing was nice, and Gallantry is a really enjoyable word to say, but it’s all also slightly embarrassing.

They’ve just finished building the Vuhalimath-laa . They can adjust it to let sunlight through, somehow, even though from the outside Earth is invisible now. If you’re flying in from Mars or Saturn, you just see the moon orbiting an empty space. So Earth is colder than it was before the Morrors came, but not as cold as it was when we left for Mars.

Of course, that doesn’t mean everything’s sorted out and everyone’s happy. Mum wasn’t kidding about it being complicated. A lot of countries left the Emergency Earth Coalition because they wouldn’t accept Morrors living on Earth permanently, even though the Morrors are plainly staying here whether anyone likes it or not. A lot of them live in Antarctica, which they’re calling Uhalarath-Moraa, and it hasn’t officially been recognised as a state yet, but Dad says it probably will be soon. And not all the Morrors are happy either – some of them don’t think there’s enough room on Earth, and still want a planet to themselves, and recently they did find a chilly little uninhabited moon out there that might be OK for them with a bit of terraforming. Dr Muldoon, who recovered fine from her injuries, is helping with that when she isn’t doing ungodly experiments on people, or flying out to Mars, or mentoring Josephine.