Kate Day - In the Quick

I had admired the Pink Planet my whole life. Read about it, talked about it, dreamed about it. It was June’s moon. I thought if I belonged anywhere, it was here. The terrain rumbled through my body as I drove up and down the silty crags, one after the other, and around rusted-out landers and satellites and probes. The rover slid into a valley, its wheels spinning as they hit the ground, and silt-covered shapes rose up all around me. Some were discernible—the flat broken wing of a shuttle, the popped dome of an abandoned mobile habitation unit. Others weren’t, and specters seemed to rise from their shapes. The steep-angled roof of my aunt’s house. Inquiry ’s tall, pointed rocket. My uncle’s high hospital bed. The sharp slope of James’s bare shoulder.

I blinked tears as I swerved away from the shapes, kept driving, on and on, until my body felt shattered. I hadn’t set my position before I left the station and now numbers on the navigation controls jumped haphazardly around the screen.

67889.0009 00032.0000 7860.0023

21450.0001 12569.5900

00007.0000 45000.9865

10050.0090 90401.0526

I had thought I was headed toward the satellite station—it was due north from the Gateway. Now I wasn’t so sure. A series of plateau-like ridges blocked out the sun ahead. I braked, tried to get my bearings, turned. I drove for a while, second-guessed myself, and turned again. I felt a flutter of panic. I’d been driving for a long time, too long. The rovers didn’t keep more than a few hours of charge at a time. Ten minutes later lights flashed on the dashboard, and the rover rolled to a stop.

I found the controls for the solar charger and deployed the panels, but nothing happened. I pressed the button again and there was a grinding sound, and then silence. A fiery heat rose in my body; I grabbed the steering wheel, laid my burning forehead against it, and screamed.

The interior of the rover cooled. My breath fogged the windows and obscured the ridges of silt surrounding me. I pulled my helmet on, and my gloves, grabbed a tool kit, and depressurized the rover. Outside, the pink haze had thinned. I climbed on top of the rover and stood; I could see for a long way and there was nothing. No structure, no solar field, no beacon or cable relay. My breath was loud and singular inside my helmet. I was entirely alone.

It took me more than six hours to fix the solar deploy mechanism. It was an almost impossible job to do alone, and the sun was intense. Tools kept slipping out of my gloves. By the time I was finished only an hour of sunlight remained in the day. I got only a partial charge on the rover, three, four hours max—which meant I wouldn’t have heat for at least four hours of the night.

I got back in and shut everything down but life support. I forced myself to think, to make a plan. I had a single bottle of water, no food. I had a compass, but I wasn’t certain of my location relative to the Gateway or satellite station, and regardless they were too far to walk to in my suit. My communications system was out of range.

I was going to have to wait until the sun rose again. On a piece of paper I did the math, trying the numbers three different ways. If I cycled the rover on every fifty minutes, I could stave off hypothermia until dawn. The first heat cycle would be in forty-five minutes, and I set my watch in case I fell asleep.

The sun slid lower on the horizon until it was just a thin slice of rosy yellow and the temperature inside the rover dropped. My fingers turned cold and my breath made clouds. I watched the minutes count down. Finally it was time and I turned on the heat, felt the blast of warmth like pinpricks on my face, neck, fingers. I rubbed my hands together over and over. Too soon it was time to cycle off. I set my watch again. There were still six and a half hours till dawn.

My body quickly cooled. I felt the freezing air seep gradually into my skin, muscles, bones. My neck and wrists and elbows turned stiff; my toes seemed to shrink inside my boots. Tremors moved through my body in waves. It was fully dark now. Outside was an empty expanse of black that seemed to stretch forever. Inside I had only my headlamp’s single spot of light. My sense of the rover, its titanium shell, pressure coated windshield, metal alloy tires—the shape and weight of all those parts—fell away, and there seemed to be nothing between me and the deep darkness surrounding me.

I went through three more cycles, my limbs becoming more rigid and my mind more sluggish with each one. I couldn’t hold on to thoughts, and the color of things changed. My suit turned gray, the rover’s dashboard white. The windows blue. The third cycle of heat seemed to have no effect at all. My body was a block of ice, my mind a flat, cold blank. I slowly crawled into the back of the rover, over the battery pack, which still held some warmth, and I pressed my body against it. The temperature dropped further. Memories skittered through my brain, of frozen trees outside the window at my aunt’s house. Icy sheets on my bed in the girls’ dormitory at Peter Reed. Crystalized condensate on an equipment panel on the Sundew. Then the memories began to shift and blur.

I tried to focus on one image at a time. The book I used to read in the window seat at my aunt’s house, New History of Energy. Carla’s hand reaching out in the darkness between our two beds at Peter Reed. But the pictures got mixed up and fused together strangely. Carla’s face appeared on the cover of the book. My dormitory bed floated in the darkness outside the porthole on the Sundew.

I pressed my body closer to the battery pack, and it was warm. Warmer than it had been, which made no sense. I felt fear, but I couldn’t think. The battery grew warmer still, until I was hot. So hot I had to unzip my suit. I had to. My skin felt like it would burn off and I wanted to pull off my gloves, my boots. But I didn’t. My brain wasn’t working, wasn’t processing, but I didn’t do it because the heat wasn’t real.

An overwhelming heaviness stole over my body, starting with my fingers and toes, and moving inward. My eyelids lowered, and I snapped them open. The next cycle was soon. I had to stay awake. But my eyelids were like lead. They lowered. They lowered. They lowered again.

I became aware of light on my shoulders. I tried to raise my head but it was an incredible immobile weight.

Then the light went away. And came back. I blinked. Someone stood in the window.

James.

But it wasn’t James. It was a man wearing a patched suit and a helmet with a discolored visor. He tapped on the window and motioned for me to put my helmet on. I couldn’t move my head. My face was numb; my cheek felt like it had adhered to my arm.

He tapped again. You have to move, he said, his voice muffled behind the glass. He tapped over and over.

I raised my head an inch and the sunlight was cruel. My head throbbed; a wave of nausea moved through my body. I forced myself to move my arms, and then my legs. Vomit stole up my throat and I swallowed it. I dragged my body sideways, felt for my helmet. I lifted my head more, two inches, enough to get my helmet on and lock it.

I stared out the window dumbly.

The man—who was it?—gestured to my chest. I looked down; my suit was unzipped, the strip of exposed skin red and raw. I fumbled to secure the zipper, my fingers numb and my grasp clumsy. After a few tries I managed it, and he opened the door and pulled me out. My limbs buckled, and he held me up.

Silt popped loudly on my helmet; sunlight bored into my eye sockets. I tried to see past the milky haze that obscured his visor but could make out only the shape of his head, the curve of his ears.