S Morden - No Way

Like now. He drove south across the Heights to the base, looking at the collection of fragile off-white tubes not as something close to a miracle, but as home. He’d made it. He’d built his own houses several times through his life. This was no different, except it was on another planet.

He parked up, facing the descent ship, and checked his air. He had easily a couple of hours left, which was more than enough. He pulled his tablet into his lap—a tablet that had been purged of any incriminating data: no documents, no files, no past messages between here and Earth—opened up the message app, and started typing.

“Phase 3 complete”, he wrote. And it almost wasn’t a lie. He still had the gun, and it wasn’t going anywhere.

He’d said that he’d tell them when he’d done—that illusion-of-control thing again—but they were going to launch anyway, no matter if he’d carried out his oft-repeated threat to string Brack up in a makeshift gibbet on the walls overlooking MBO. It would be up to him to explain that, and he didn’t have the emotional energy to even try. He didn’t have energy left for much at all.

He sat on the buggy, and waited. All his work was over. Tomorrow would be the start of Phase four, and he was off the clock until then.

Twenty-eight minutes later, his tablet registered an incoming message.

“You’ve done so very well, Frank. No one else could have coped like you have, done all the work like you have, kept your composure in the way you have. You’re the very best of people, and it breaks my heart that we’ll never meet. We are go for DV launch. Luisa.”

The ship was two miles away across the Heights, a barely thumbnail-sized white cone set against the flaring red of a Martian sunset. The colors were deepening towards black as the sun sank lower, and the shadows cast in the airborne dust growing more solid. There, if anywhere, was the beauty in the bleakness.

He was looking in the direction of the peak of Ceraunius when the ground suddenly shifted under the buggy. His head snapped around, and already a wall of red cloud was rushing towards him. It went through him, and a second, thicker wind was already on its way. But rising above the long-dead world, balanced on a dirty column of churning gray smoke, was the fleck of the ship.

It drove hard and fast, and as the second storm blanketed him, he heard the boom of the rocket’s ignition.

The dust cleared. The air crackled with imperfect combustion. A single incandescent flame continued to climb upwards, all detail of what it was propelling lost already. The sound of distant thunder faded, rolling between land and darkening sky.

Of course, if M2 hadn’t known exactly where MBO was, the ragged smoking finger that pointed downwards in an arc was going to be a big fucking giveaway. It even caught the dying rays of the sun before it slung itself over the horizon, turning for a moment from soot to bronze.

High winds started to tug at the smoke, pulling it apart, and Frank eventually looked down. Twilight had fallen, before the proper night began. He drove over to the recharging point, and plugged in the buggy for a top-up. He had watts to play with now, and he could leave it charging until the fuel cell registered full.

His last-thing routine was shot, but he still circumnavigated the base, even if he couldn’t carry out the gross visual checks, and then he entered the cross-hab airlock, cycling it and exiting with his hand on the gun. He turned left, and right, and could see nothing that had moved, that he hadn’t moved himself. It was, since he started leaving all the internal airlock doors open, the only way in and out of the base. Another precautionary habit that he was going to have to unlearn by tomorrow.

He left the door behind him open, too.

But yes, he was alone, for now, for the moment. He put the gun down on top of the life support rack and checked the external pressure. It read a solid five psi, and none of the oxygen alarms were ringing. He was OK to exit his suit, and he thumbed his way through the flip-down menu on his front until he reached the right command.

He crawled backwards out of his suit, hung it up, racked his life support, and unclipped the tablet, wiping the dust from its screen with his forearm. He probably needed to remember to get dressed at some point, too. In Brack’s overalls. He’d sent up his own blood-stained set on the ship. Zeus’s overalls would have drowned him, and no one else’s were remotely large enough.

But he couldn’t walk around like some kind of bum. He needed to relearn that, too, as well as regaining the power of speech. Part of the reason why he went around just in his long johns most of the time was so that he could get into his suit quickly. With the arrival of the others, he could get back to some kind of normal. Whatever that was. Normal for Mars.

He deliberately pulled on the overalls. They felt tight around the shoulders, and up against his crotch. Maybe the cloth would loosen up with more wearing.

The gun went into a pocket, and he collected the scuba gear and his tablet.

Now, food. Coffee. Everything was in place. All evidence of anyone else on the base had been erased. Except for the gun, and that too would have to go by the morning. He’d bag it, so that the alkaline soil wouldn’t eat it away, and he’d take it outside and bury it. He’d use the cairn that they’d created when they were building the base, moving the loose rocks that might have punctured the sub-floor matting.

It was a pile five, maybe six feet high, and thin in the reduced gravity. He’d do that. Rebuild the cairn over the top. A marker to show he’d finally, finally left all that shit behind. Tomorrow, he’d be safe. Safer. At least there’d be other people to keep watch for him. He’d never really be safe.

And tonight, he’d keep that gun close at hand. Just in case.

[Message file #274-1058 2/7/2049 1437 CAPCOM Ares IV Mission Control to Ares IV “Prairie Rose” Mars Orbit]

Hawthorn, all systems nominal. Surface conditions are good, and Mars Base One is down there waiting for you.

You are go for descent. Godspeed.

[transcript ends]

Frank got the call ten minutes before. He suited up, and went outside to watch. Watching was all he could do. Was it all the astronauts could do too? Would they fall and have to trust the automatics, or could they pilot themselves down? Even then, there might be nothing they could do to correct their course: if something went wrong, it would happen so very quickly. Whatever happened, Frank was only ever going to be a witness.

He clipped his tablet to his waist, and checked he had the pouch of suit patches. Then one last look around. What shouldn’t be there? The blue surgical glove. That wasn’t necessary any more, was it? And he really didn’t have a good excuse for it sitting there, perched on top of the life support rack. He picked it up, and pulled at the knot in the wrist, but undoing knots was about as difficult as it was making them while wearing the spacesuit gauntlets.

In the end, he stretched the thumb out hard enough to create a tiny hole, and then dug his fingers in to widen it. He didn’t quite know what to do with the broken glove now, so he just pushed it into the pouch at his waist.

The scuba gear could stay where it was. That was explicable. And he was wearing his one-piece, and Brack’s overalls were sitting on a hanger, waiting for him to change into. Slippers too. He’d showered this morning. He’d eaten. He felt OK. He felt he’d done enough.

That didn’t mean he’d done it all. Was there something he’d left in plain sight, something he’d grown so accustomed to seeing that he didn’t really see it any more, but that would immediately attract the attention of a newcomer—who’d pick it up and want to know what it was? And Frank would unravel.