Larry Niven - The Barsoom Project

Something soft slammed into his chest and sent him stumbling backward. He couldn’t hold the belly laugh in even as he tried to catch his balance. They were stranded! Their food was going up in smoke! The copilot, fried! This was disastrous! This was tragic!

This was getting really interesting.

Eviane watched Francis Hebert roll clumsily down the chute. He managed to right himself, and hit the ground running. The stewardess helped Trianna Stith-Wood through the doorway. For all her size Trianna managed somehow to express panic in a dainty, ladylike manner.

Eviane decided that she definitely didn’t like the woman.

Crates of equipment lay scattered in the snow as Bowles and the pilot struggled to haul luggage from the cargo hold. The Guardsman left the chute three feet above the ground, hit the ground rolling, and took off with rifle held at the ready.

The stewardess took a last look into the plane, seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, and stepped out into the chute.

The plane shuddered against the ground, and an instant later the windows exploded, gouting fire. For an instant the stewardess was outlined in flame, her body a blackened silhouette against a yellow corona. Then she was gone.

The plane’s death-cry flattened the hapless Gamers. Chunks of burning metal rained from the sky.

Eviane lay facedown in the snow. The snow just a few feet from her head flickered with gasoline flames, and glistened as it melted. A fragment of twisted steel lay just out of reach. It was hot. It would burn her if she touched it… wouldn’t it?

It was all real. The mists were clearing…

She stood, and looked down and out at the survivors. Thirteen in all, passengers and crew. They moved toward Bowles, gathering into a tight clump to hear each other over a hammering, frigid wind.

The pilot yelled above the storm. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bowles. Made a right cock-up of that one. I think there must have been a bullet in the fuel tank. Where’s Greg? Where’s…?“

The pilot gasped, eyes fixed on a smoldering, human-shaped mass lying crumpled in the snow at least thirty feet from the plane. Ashen-faced, he ran toward it, legs plowing unsteadily through the snow, and at last stood silently above what was left of the stewardess. He removed his outer jacket and draped it over her smoldering corpse. His breath puffed little clouds into the air. He shivered, and wrapped his arms around himself, rubbing his shoulders.

After a few seconds, he rather guiltily took his jacket back.

Bowles threw a blanket over the stew’s body. He said, “Grant, we’ve got to reach the lodge. Apologize then.” He glanced up at the shrunken sun, which was a third above the horizon. “I figure we have a month of daylight left. It will just have to be enough.”

“Then three or four months of night,” the pilot said, “and after that…”

“Fimbulwinter,” Bowles said. “Carbon dioxide freezing out of the atmosphere, maybe. Ah, well. Sufficient unto the day.”

The wind was whipping the fire to death. Snow ran in blinding flurries. Eviane shielded her face as her cheeks began to numb. The Guardsman ran up to them, carrying his rifle at port arms.

“Supply store!” Bowles’s scream competed with the storm’s growing wail. He pointed into a white wall of driving snow. “Can’t see it, but it’s out there.”

“Eskimo village, half a mile that way,” the soldier shouted back. “They must have seen us come down. Probably on. their way now.”

Eviane picked up a box marked with a red cross. It was heavy. She trudged toward the cluster of buildings. The other Gamers followed her, carrying gear, leaving tracks like a colony of snow snails. The sky began to clear, the wall of white slowing to a flurry.

Charlene caught up with her. “Whew. Off to a start, aren’t we?” Charlene lowered her voice. “You’ve Gamed before. What is happening?”

Game? This isn’t a Game. It’s…

It’s…

Eviane shook her head, clearing the smoky strands that wove themselves tighter and thicker by the moment. A flicker of prescience made her say, “I don’t know. Let’s just play it by ear.”

“Ear?”

The door of the supply store was open a crack. Grant pushed against it cautiously with his fingertips. The pilot had just lost a plane, a copilot, and a stewardess. He might not be overwhelmingly eager to lose a half-dozen passengers.

The door creaked open, throwing a wedge of light into an abandoned store. As soon as Grant nodded, the Gamers crowded in, out of the freezing wind. Oh, it was stocked. Well stocked, in fact, with all manner of food, and suddenly Eviane remembered that the alarm Klaxon had sounded in the middle of breakfast. A line of portable stoves, several canisters of fuel: they could cook, too.

Orson Sands spread massive fingers, grabbing three foil packets of pork and beans. “Real men don’t need Sterno,” he proclaimed. “I’ll suck ‘em cold.”

Kevin, the skinny kid, called from elsewhere in the store. “Clothing. Coats! Hats! It’s cold out there, troops.”

“Wait just a minute.” Bowles seemed uneasy. He ran thick fingers through his beard, brushing out snow. “Why isn’t there anybody here? Where in the devil are they?”

“I don’t know and don’t really care.” Orson’s teeth tore a foil packet’s serrated corner. He spat.

“You had better start caring, if you want to stay alive very long,” his brother Max said cautiously. Eviane’s little pink heart leapt. Max was smart, and despite his girth looked like a fighter.

She remembered him, too, from the Tar Pits mini-Game. He was well over six feet tall, inches shorter than Charlene but three times as wide. He looked a lot like his brother Orson, barring his neatly trimmed beard; but he looked and moved more like an athlete. His belly didn’t sag the same way. An ex-football player, maybe? His eyes were a luminous gray-black.

He said, “Orson! Even up here, would people just walk away from a store and leave the door open? All right, maybe they would. But we have an exploding airplane out here, and nobody has even come to take a look.” His voice was patient. “It’s another puzzle, Orson.”

Orson said, “Aw, Max… yeah.”

Eviane noticed Charlene watching them. She whispered, “Brothers. Interested?”

Charlene nodded judiciously.

“Me too. His name’s Max.”

The pilot was saying, “Vote! All in favor of checking to see what is happening around here, say aye.”

“Aye!!“ Six hands and voices were raised. Three belonged to Charlene and Max and Hippogryph.

“Opposed?”

Seven no’s.

“The no’s have it,” Grant said.

The Gamers drifted among the shelves. Some were at the rear with Kevin and Hippogryph, choosing cold-weather gear. More were finding dinner.

Trianna Stith-Wood called, “Veal paprika!”

Johnny Welsh’s head rotated 150 degrees. “Veal?”

Trianna rubbed the foil packet, winking. “I make a veal loaf to die for. Thyme, tarragon leaves, minced parsley, and tomato fondue sauce.”

“Lady, you’re killing me.”

“There are worse-”

Bang.

The clatter of canned goods stopped. Another distant gunshot, then a volley. Orson Sands dropped the bag of freeze-dried pork and beans, eyes sparkling. “Puzzle, right.” He and Max thundered through the door, the others crowding right behind.

They clustered outside, looking out across the choppy permafrost of the valley floor into the blizzard-shrouded ridge to the north. Had the shots come from there? It was the only decent cover…

“Come on, baby.” Max Sands spoke again, and Eviane found herself drifting closer to him, craving an opportunity to watch more closely.