Mars Maze (Short Story)

by Deborah Jackson

  Episode 5

  Sarah gawked. Was it a dream? Could some incredibly strange-looking industrious people have created a biosphere on Mars? If it were real, they actually might not die.

  Then an ash cloud belched from the volcano and she thought, But we probably will.

  “Run!” screamed Matt. He ran forward, too fast, and fell and rolled and bounced into a crater. He somersaulted several meters down the quartz-crusted bowl until he finally jittered to a stop.

  “Matt,” she yelled, forgetting the volcano as she looked at him sprawled on the ground. Was he, perhaps, extremely injured now?

  She carefully stepped down the slope, trying to take slow measured strides to keep from tumbling after him. But a glowing ball of pumice slammed into the ground only a metre to her side, sizzling into the earth, or so it appeared since the only thing she could hear was Matt’s strained breathing.

  She walked forward again, as another red-hot stone and then another fell into the crater. Soon the sky seemed clouded with balls and marbles and hailstones of the brightest orange, peppering the ground around her. One slammed into her helmet with a dull thud. Would it penetrate the Kevlar and burn right through her scalp? She shook her head and the stone fell to the ground, her helmet still intact. Wow, did she ever love those Kevlar-makers.

  “Matt? Are you okay?”

  He groaned and twitched, so at least he was alive.

  “Matt, we’re being rained on by lava bombs, I think they’re called. We have to get out of here, to the dome, or whatever it is. Can you move?”

  “I’m . . . just . . . fine,” he said, although he sounded anything but fine.

  Sarah shuffled to his side and knelt down. She grabbed him around the shoulders and propped him up. “Can you walk?”

  “I feel kind of woozy.” He nearly tipped back down.

  Sarah caught him securely in the net of her arms as the glowing balls accompanied by a cloud of ash rained down on them. “This is no time to be woozy!” she yelled, although she probably shouldn’t yell. She couldn’t make him un-woozy by yelling.

  “I haf ta get you out a this,” said Matt, as he teetered again.

  “Right,” said Sarah. “Just like every other time.”

  What could she do? She could hear thunk, thunk, thunk, as they were bombarded. And this lovely Kevlar might work for a while, but it couldn’t withstand an assault from the fiery depths of hell, which Mars was starting to look like. Plus, the milky substance on Matt’s glove and her shoulder appeared to be doing what the lava hadn’t yet. The suit was becoming threadbare.

  “I’m going to carry you,” she said.

  “Too heavy,” he protested, but his voice was so faint it sounded more like a squeak.

  “Matt,” she said. “For a guy who battles crocodiles and lions, you sound like a mouse.” She couldn’t help it.

  “Not true,” he squeaked and teetered and grabbed her arm.

  Sarah tucked her head under his arm and hoisted him up. She wobbled, but she felt ten times stronger in this low gravity, or at least three times. The air was thick with red dust, gray ash, and tennis balls of lava. It was like walking through a bowl of Chunky soup. But she remembered, or at least she thought she did, where the protective dome was located. To the right, along the canyon, toward an erupting volcano.

  Matt groaned and clung to her waist, his head bobbing against her back. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I got us killed this time.”

  “We’re not dead yet,” she snapped. The terrain had levelled off, so they must have reached the top of the crater. Now to find shelter. She walked with Pierce-Brosnan determination toward the sparks of reflecting lava bombs. At least she hoped it was a reflection. If PB could row through an acid lake, drive over burning lava and escape a town-disintegrating eruption, she could do this, right? But he probably had a stunt man. She didn’t have a stunt man.

  She dodged a giant boulder that crashed into the ground, and staggered forward again.

  “You shouldn’t blame yourself,” she muttered. “I always blame you when we nearly die, but I come with you. I might argue, but I do it anyway. Not because I believe we’ll make it every time. I don’t. It’s because it isn’t right to leave your dad trapped in the multiverse. He belongs with you. It’s not even right to leave Nadine, even though she put him there to begin with. No one should end up where they don’t belong.”

  “Or step on a butterfly,” he said.

  Normally, she would think it was the concussion talking, but she’d heard something about the butterfly effect.

  “I think we’ve stepped on a hundred butterflies, Matt.”

  “And a few ants and mosquitoes too.”

  She kept traipsing forward, but she scrunched her face this time. Maybe it was a concussion.

  “Not to mention some bears, skunks and chickens.”

  Sarah sighed. “And lots of people.”

  “But we didn’t change anything for that fish-man. He was dead to begin with.”

  Sarah stopped. She saw herself, a glass partition that reflected her body and Matt’s legs. They’d made it to the biodome. She could see inside, but the view seemed distorted. A man was walking by, or was he floating? Or was he a man?

  “We’re here,” she said. “I just need to find the door. But, Matt?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think I was right about the aquarium. I think it’s all water in there.”

  “So what?” he said. “These suits are airtight and watertight. The astronauts train with them underwater.”

  “Oh,” she said. “That’s good.” Why didn’t it feel good, though?

  She shuffled along the exterior of the dome, following the thick pane of glass and the waving fronds of seaweed on the other side of the glass. She witnessed a gaping creature with a scaly head of almost-human proportions and flipper-like arms swirl around and begin to trace her movements. Beyond the creature, other sea animals appeared. A scuttling crab, a flailing octopus, a hundred silvery flashing sardines. An ocean was being introduced, or maybe reintroduced to Mars. There seemed such promise in it, in this dry dusty world, especially when the oceans on earth were in such peril. Finally she found what looked like a door, or the framework for a door. She stopped again.

  “Matt, what if we’re going to introduce this bacteria into their aquarium and kill them all?”

  “Oh,” he said, as if his head was hurting. Hers was probably hurting more.

  “We shouldn’t go in.”

  “Hmm,” he replied.

  “Matt?”

  “Sarah. There’s a huge stream of lava heading right for us.”

  Sarah looked and saw, despite soot-like ash clouds smothering the air, a ripple of berry-red and black-crusted lava creeping toward them.

  The door swooshed open in front of them.

  “We die, or we kill the fish-people.”

  “We’re evil,” said Sarah, prepared to step inside. But her heart squeezed in a painful contraction, and she just . . . couldn’t.

  “I guess it’s time for it to end, Matt. I can’t kill all those people just to save ourselves.”

  He groaned, but it sounded like a groan of agreement.

  “Sarah, set me down,” he said. “If we’re going to die, I want to look at you.”

  Sarah set him on the ground. He gripped her hand and gave her one last intense gaze. The lava foamed at their back.

  Suddenly arms grabbed them—long, steel mechanical arms—and propelled them into the dome. The door swooshed closed. They were in some kind of antechamber, like a secondary airlock for a spaceship. The chamber began to fill with water.

  “Oh no,” said Sarah. “They’re too good for us. They wouldn’t let us die.”

  “Maybe,” said Matt, “it’s disinfectant water.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “you’re dreaming.”

  “Maybe,” he said, “water kills this type of bacteria.”

  “I doubt it. We have to warn them, Matt. We have to keep them from ope
ning the door to the aquarium.”

  The chamber was filling rapidly. A group of fish-people stared at them through the glass partition, five, six, now maybe ten scaly bodies with noses rather than snouts and hands with opposable thumbs at the end of their flippers. An evolving race. They looked curious, but not hostile.

  The lava pushed up against the dome, but it couldn’t penetrate the glass, or whatever material it was. It must be mighty strong.

  Matt peered at his hand where the residue seemed to be detaching from his glove. It floated into the water around them.

  “I think water washes this off,” he said. “But it might still hurt marine life.” He pointed at the bacteria and looked at the fish people. He pantomimed coughing, choking, dying.

  If they didn’t grasp the meaning of the residue, Matt’s acting ability seemed to do the trick, for they suddenly looked alarmed. Then a vibration rippled through the chamber and the water swirled, caught in some kind of vortex. Everything in the chamber began whirling around, including Matt and Sarah.

  “Matt,” she said. “I think we’re being flushed.”

  “Never thought I’d see the day,” he said.

  “I’m not surprised,” said Sarah. “It’s exactly what we deserve, considering all the worlds we’ve meddled in.”

  They were tumbling head over heels, rushing through a tunnel lined with chipped rock. But a mysterious glow lit up the tunnel, somewhere in the distance.

  “Matt,” she gasped. “I think we’re being flushed into a magma chamber.”

  “Hmm,” he said. “Not good.”

  “Not good? Not good!”

  “Relax.”

  “How can I relax when . . .”

  A zap occurred, and then a contraction that squelched her lungs until they nearly imploded. They splashed to the floor, back in the lab.

  “Oh.”

  “Sometimes you just need to relax,” he commented.

  Okay, so now they were safe. Okay, so now might be the ideal time to strangle him. But was everyone safe? “What about your dad?” she asked.

  “Oh, Dad will be okay. Just before we left, I had Isabelle send him a suit in that weird lightning universe you didn’t want to go to.”

  “Are you trying to tell me we didn’t have to go to Mars in the first place?”

  “N-no. He may not have used—”

  “Matt, I’m going to kill . . .” She couldn’t choke out the words. “And Nadine? Did you send a suit for Nadine?

  He didn’t answer.

  “Matt?”

  “Nadine will blend right in with the fish-people.”

  “Matt, seriously?”

  “Yeah, I sent one for her too. Isabelle made me.”

  Sarah sighed. At least he hadn’t killed Nadine. She didn’t want that on her conscience, even though the woman could still use a little hair-ripping.

  “We’re home,” she murmured, her helmet filling with her resonant sigh. Not a thing in the world to worry about here.

  Except . . . something was flapping against her suit. Something the fish-people may have decided to flush too. Something that might have acid for blood, or might just make a good pet.