Offworld

by Robin Parrish

  She opened her eyes and jerked her head around with a start. Mae stood beside her.

  Trisha grabbed the girl by the arm and dragged her out toward the nurses' station so they would be out of earshot of anyone else.

  "Why were you eavesdropping?" she hissed.

  "Wasn't," Mae replied.

  "Then what were you doing?"

  Mae shrugged. "Needed to-"

  "What?" Trisha spat. "You needed to what?!"

  Mae looked at her with those silver eyes, and as ever Trisha found it impossible to decipher what was going on behind them. They were unnatural, unsettling.

  "It'll keep," Mae replied with a half frown. She pulled her arm away from Trisha's strong grasp and disappeared from her sight.

  Trisha watched her go, hands on her hips and fuming.

  That girl was not right in the head. And with all the strange things happening to Chris, Trisha was beginning to wonder if there was more to Mae and her creepy eyes than any of them could see.

  Mae wandered the wide, unwelcoming halls of this sterile place and wanted more than anything to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

  These people didn't know her, didn't trust her, and probably never would.

  It always happened this way. The few times she ever tried to make a friend or join up with a group, it happened just like this.

  "Hey, Mae-day," chimed Terry's voice.

  She turned to see he was following her.

  "How's it going?" he said, smiling.

  "Dunno," she said, deflated.

  He was more cheerful than usual and didn't seem to notice her gloominess. Not that anyone ever did.

  "Well, I'm feeling pretty good," he went on. "It's not every day you get to save the lives of all your friends by flying through a tropical storm to a midair rescue. Did you see how smooth I kept the chopper while everyone climbed onboard? It was poetry in motion. In fact, I may just have to write a poem about it."

  Mae wanted to roll her eyes, but didn't. "What do you want?"

  "Have you had lunch yet? I saw some frozen dinners in the cafeteria I could whip up for us, and of course we'd have our choice of any table in the house...

  She shifted her weight away from him and crossed her arms. "This a date?" she asked, incredulous.

  Terry froze, his jubilant attitude sinking. "No! I mean, I don't know. I just felt like celebrating, and wondered if maybe we could-"

  "Well we can't," Mae interrupted. `Ain't nothing worth celebrating, nohow."

  She turned and stalked away in ice-cold silence, her arms still folded.

  Every step Terry took closer to his room, the angrier he became. What was Mae's problem? Offering her lunch didn't mean he was trying anything. Not that he was altogether opposed to the idea. She wasn't his usual type-the cracked teeth and dirty clothes didn't exactly scream "sweep me off my feet! "-but it's not like there was a smorgasbord for either of them to pick from.

  And he'd just saved all of their lives. Single-handedly.

  What was her problem?

  Since they met, he'd enjoyed talking to her, because she was the one person whose responses he couldn't predict. He knew Chris, Trisha, and Owen so well that there was very little they could say to him that was unexpected. But with Mae, every encounter was random, arbitrary, and even weird.

  But apparently she wasn't in the mood to socialize today. She was so odd ... he was better off eating alone. Yeah.

  Way to ruin everything, Mae. Thanks for being such a whack job.

  Only he still didn't want to eat alone. Maybe he would just skip lunch.

  Or maybe Owen was hungry.

  "Hey, Beech, you want to grab a bite?" Terry called out. Owen's room was a few doors down from his own.

  But Owen gave no reply. Terry could hear the silent sounds of movement in the room, so he knew Owen was inside.

  The door stood partially open. Terry knocked and pushed it aside.

  Owen sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his left hand.

  "What's wrong?" Terry asked.

  "Nothing," Owen replied, not looking up. "Not one thing."

  Terry stepped inside and leaned back against the opposite wall from where Owen sat. He bent forward, inspecting the hand Owen was looking at.

  "What happened, you hurt yourself?"

  "No, nothing like that."

  Terry forced his mind to slow down. "What's going on?"

  Owen reared back and examined the ceiling for a moment, then finally he looked back down but couldn't seem to make eye contact with Terry.

  "I shouldn't have gone," said Owen, a somber, despondent sound in his voice. "On the mission."

  "What? Where's this coming from?" said Terry. "You missing your family?"

  "If you count training and mission prep, I wasn't there for over three years. Three years of their lives. My son was eight when I left; he'd be eleven now. I wonder how tall he is. I wonder if he remembers me. Or if I would recognize him if I could see him."

  "But they supported your decision," Terry protested. All those TV interviews Clara gave, where she talked about how historic the mission was and what an honor it was for you to ..

  Terry stopped talking when he saw Owen sadly shaking his head.

  "She was playing the `proper astronaut's wife' role for the media, just as she was expected to. Did you know NASA prepped her for those interviews? They gave her an eleven-page document full of talking points to memorize. She did her job; she put on a good show. The truth was something different than what the public saw."

  Terry was starting to feel like they were venturing into sensitive territory. Things that had been hidden away. He wasn't used to seeing the big man this way, and it was uncomfortable.

  "It's not like you haven't seen them, man. You got vid greetings from them every week."

  "You can't know anything about anyone in a one-minute recording once a week. I missed so many birthdays, anniversaries, Christmases, vacations.... Did you know Joey had a two-night hospital stay about a year ago? I don't think I told anyone. I still don't know exactly what happened, some kind of viral stomach infection. Clara had to take him to the hospital all by herself, and stay with him there, worried and afraid and alone." Owen shook his head bitterly. "I should have been there."

  "Don't do this to yourself, man," said Terry. "You can't control-"

  Owen kept talking as if he hadn't heard anything. "I don't know anything about Joey anymore. I don't know what his interests are, I don't know who his friends are, what he's learned in school while I was away, or if he finally outgrew his fear of thunderstorms. I gave him a stuffed bear for his third birthday that he used to sleep with every night. I couldn't tell you if he even still has it.

  `And Clara ... She's slept in bed without me next to her for over three years. Would she even be able to sleep if I were there now? And I used to empty the trash. I swept up the kitchen floor. I washed the car, mowed the lawn, and a hundred other little things. She's had to do all of that stuff. Without me. What if she doesn't need me to do those things anymore? What if she doesn't need me?"

  "But if you hadn't gone on the mission," Terry suggested, "you wouldn't be here, you'd have disappeared just like everyone else."

  "I'd be with them," Owen said. "Wherever they are, I'd be with them now. Even if they're dead ... a part of me would take that over this. I should've been here when it happened, I should have been with them. They shouldn't have been alone. Especially Joey.

  "You know how they say that little boys need their dads? Until I went to Mars ... I never realized how much dads need their little boys."

  Terry didn't know what to say. And his thoughts were half here, half back at Mae's bad mood. Was everyone losing hope all of a sudden? Did none of their spirits get a boost from his spectacular heroics last night?

  "I'm sorry, man," Terry said. "I feel so naive ... I really thought you were doing okay."

  "I was." Owen smiled a heartbroken smile. He held up his left hand-the same one he'd been examining when Terry w
alked in the room. "But I lost something."

  Terry looked again at Owen's bare hand. A hand that was too bare.

  Owen's wedding ring wasn't there anymore.

  "How, when-?"

  "I don't know," replied Owen. "I think it's been gone since Biloxi, probably sometime at the lighthouse. The really sad thing is that I only noticed it a few minutes ago. How could I not notice a thing like that when it happened?"

  Terry had no comfort, no joke, nothing to offer his friend.

  Chris was injured, Trisha was wiped out, Mae had blown him off, and now the steady rock that was Owen was falling apart before his eyes. They were crumbling in. Imploding.

  "They're out there, man," said Terry, trying hard to believe his own words. "Somewhere. We're going to find them. You will see them again."

  "Yeah," said Owen without inflection. "Sure"

  No one slept. Under one roof but separated, all five of them tossed and turned and tangled themselves up in their bed sheets.

  It was a long night made longer when the eardrum-piercing alarms of Methodist Hospital started blaring around two in the morning. The rooms they were using each contained an alarm of their own, and those quiet, lonely rooms went straight from stifling silence to DEFCON 1, catapulting everyone from their beds.

  Burke, despite his injury, was the first out of his room. Smoke filled the hallways at the ceiling, so he crouched low. Adrenaline coursed through his system despite his lack of sleep and the burning sensations in his immobilized shoulder.

  "Everybody out!" he screamed. "Outside now, leave everything!"

  Trisha appeared right behind him, her features gaunt, dark rings under her eyes. She braced her lower back with one hand as she bent over to match his posture.

  "Get outside, now!" he shouted, and though he knew she would rather stay inside and help him ensure everyone got out, she complied.

  Chris moved as fast as he could, rounding a handful of corners until he'd reached the adjacent ward where Owen and Terry were staying. Owen was emerging from his room just as Chris arrived; he clutched his satellite-linked laptop, to which Chris attributed his lateness at getting out of his room. The smoke was beginning to drop lower....

  "Where's Terry!" Chris shouted between coughs.

  Owen shook his head, coughing as he inhaled smoke.

  Chris placed his one good hand on Owen's shoulder, guiding him along the corridor until he was in sight of the exit. Chris had no doubt that Owen knew exactly where the exit was, but he wanted to make sure no one got confused in the smoke.

  He noticed that the smoke had taken on an orange hue as he rounded another corner, moving toward the room Mae had chosen for herself. It could only mean that he was getting closer to the source of the fire. The temperature rose quickly as if to confirm his suspicions.

  "Terry!" he yelled. "Mae!"

  Terry emerged through the thick smoke, sprinting, and would have knocked Chris over had he not pulled up at the last second, the momentum forcing him to land on his back.

  "Where's Mae?" shouted Chris, helping him up.

  "Not in her room!" Terry replied. "I don't know where she is, she-"

  "Maybe she already got out!" said Chris. "Go outside and see if you find her. I'm going to make a quick run-through to be sure!"

  "I won't leave her behind! And I'm not gonna ditch you either!"

  "She doesn't need you to rescue her!" Chris warned. "Now go!"

  Terry clearly wanted to protest, but he relented and ran for the exit. Chris resumed his search.

  "Mae?! Mae.!"

  Come on, a little help, please ... Where is she ... ?

  Through hallway after hallway he ran, shouting Mae's name but finding no sign of her. He wiped black, grimy sweat from his forehead and coughed until his shoulder ached.

  Somewhere in the distance, an explosion went off, powerful enough to shake the building. He wondered what part of the hospital would contain explosive compounds. Maybe a chemical lab of some kind?

  `Mae.!"

  The smoke was worse now, and he knew he had only seconds before escaping wouldn't be an option, but just as he was about to give up and join the others outside, he saw a sign for the cafeteria and took a chance.

  A powerful blaze roared inside the large room, where Mae stood off to one side, her back against the wall, trapped by the flames.

  "Mae!" Chris shouted.

  She looked up and saw him; her expression was as blank as ever, but tears were streaming down her cheeks and she seemed to be frozen in place. She held a piece of half-eaten toast in her hand. It looked like she had tried to scrape the moldy parts off enough to make it edible.

  "Didn't know it would-didn't mean to ... !" she cried.

  Chris glanced over at the adjacent kitchen and could clearly see the toaster. Both it and its power cord were intact. They were located nowhere near the fire.

  "Stay put!" he yelled. "I'm coming to get you!"

  Thinking fast, Chris saw that a series of booths and tables ran along a side wall of the dining room to the place where Mae stood. He climbed up on top of the nearest table and jumped over to the next one, repeating the maneuver until he reached the line of flames. The fire flickered high, but he believed he could breach it without getting burned.

  He took the jump, and crashed hard onto the ground on his bad shoulder, inside the semicircle of fire where Mae waited. Without a word, Chris grabbed her and slung her over his good shoulder. Thinking twice about trying to make the jump again with considerably more weight, he instead hefted the girl with his arm and tossed her like a rag doll over the flames and onto a padded booth just outside the fire. She landed on her stomach and rolled off onto the floor with a thud.

  Once he saw she was clear, he jumped again, and this time he missed the closest table altogether and landed instead on the floor.

  "You're on fire!" Mae screamed, pointing.

  He looked down; the bottoms of his pant legs were burning. He dropped to the ground again and rolled until the fire went out.

  Scrambling to his feet, Chris grabbed Mae by the hand and headed for the exit, hacking and coughing the whole way.

  They burst through the double glass doors into the warm but fresh, welcoming night air, and took in great lungfuls of the stuff. He spotted the others standing off to one side of the building in the dark, their forms illuminated by the dancing orange flames.

  They were gazing up toward the top of the hospital, and he looked to see what had their attention. The roof of the building was slowly collapsing, giving off great showering embers, and taking the helicopter down with it.

  No time to worry about that now. First things first.

  "Is everybody all right?" he shouted over the raging flames and collapsing building.

  No one replied. Chris looked at them one by one and noticed that none of them was facing the building or the helicopter anymore. They had shifted their attention just to the right of the fire. Terry's and Trisha's mouths were hanging open.

  It was there, spiraling slowly and silently in midair two hundred feet away.

  The dark, black void.

  NINE

  The light beckoned him, and Chris followed it.

  It was moving fast, leading him deeper into the lava tube, this underground tunnel that he was trapped in, with no hope of rescue. He tried to keep up, to get close enough to see what the light really was, but no matter how fast he went, he couldn't get near it.

  From what little he could tell, it was probably round in shape, like a ball. And there were starbursts of white light streaking from it in all directions.

  He had mere minutes to live. He knew it. Maybe just seconds. But he didn't want to look down at the timer on his arm again. Not anymore. Looking made it real, and as much as he wanted to see death coming, he didn't want to give it the satisfaction of knowing it had made him anxious.

  His breathing felt labored, shallow. Yet still his feet continued to carry him forward, his legs refusing to stop following the strange light.<
br />
  What was he looking at? Some bizarre alien life form or technology.?

  Or was he just hallucinating?

  That seemed more likely. But he found he didn't mind. As long as he continued to hallucinate, that meant he was still thinking, still drawing breath, still pumping blood through his heart.

  As much as Chris knew that death was inevitable-be it in minutes or seconds-he did not welcome it. Neither did he fear it. He only feared a death that came for him before he was finished fiul/illing his purpose. Death after he was done with all that he had to do ... That didn't seem so bad.

  Do your work, take a bow, get off the stage.

  It was better than being yanked off in the middle of yourgreatest triumph. And what could be greater than being the first man to set foot on Mars, and safely returning home? He would have to settle for that first part.

  Chris finally gained some ground on the ball of light, and as he drew nearer, he could see it in more detail. He saw that the rays of light weren't rays at all. They were lines made up of what be believed to be symbols. Rows and rows of odd symbols emanating from the orb in every direction, arranged in perfectly straight lines. And the symbols were constantly moving outward, as if the orb was creating them and pushing them away from itself. The symbols or sh. apes were still blurry at this distance, but bed never seen anything resembling their patterns before.

  The lava tube began curving to the left and sloping downward, and the bull of light followed it, going ever deeper under the ground.

  Chris knew this would not help his situation, but it's not like rescue was going to find him now anyway.

  In for a penny ...

  He was surprised to suddenly find himself drawing much closer to the light. And as he came nearer, the light began to change shape. It had been maybe the size of a basketball when hefirst came upon it, but now it was growing, and it was taking on more of a boxlike shape.

  It stopped, hovering in midair.