Pale Mars

by Garnett Elliott

  "Are they safe to use?"

  "Well …"

  He pushed the curtains aside with the sword-tip and beckoned for them to follow. A pair of emergency pressure doors separated the lobby from the rest of the hotel. He knocked three times in rapid succession, then once. A moment later the door cracked and a tense, bespectacled face peered out.

  "S'alright, Elaine," Ramos said. "These are friendlies."

  "I heard a shot," the old woman said.

  "Just a misunderstanding, is all."

  She backed away, allowing them entrance to what had once been the hotel's coffee shop and lounge, now functioning as a bivouac. Mattress pads had been arranged around a bare heating coil. There were stacked boxes of freeze-dried food, water jugs, and about half a dozen people, from children to elderly, all with the same look of hollow fear on their faces. Aside from Jimmy and Ramos, none of them struck Nadezhda as able-bodied for combat.

  Then she noticed something else.

  A lone woman sat apart from the group. She had black hair, Slavic cheekbones, and clutched an Eastern Orthodox cross against her chest, rocking back and forth with eyes closed, muttering.

  "Dr. Azarova," Nadezhda said, recognition replacing shock. Someone had poured a ring of salt around her fellow Soviet. "Dr. Azarova, it's me, Nadezhda from Donetsk Academy. Do you remember? We met three years ago in Moscow …"

  The woman glanced up. Her dark eyes were clouded, unfocused. Fear had sucked away all comprehension. Her chin quivered when she spoke.

  "Upyr," she said, "upyr."

  Vampire.

  * * *

  "Must be a small country you Russians come from," Ramos said, "to travel halfway across the solar system and meet someone you already know." Nadezhda was holding Azarova's hand, rubbing the back of it gently. "The doctor is a famous archeologist. In my country, at least. She discovered the monoliths on Callisto."

  "Huh. We'd figured her for a spy."

  Nadezhda kept her features carefully blank. "It's my understanding she was sent here as part of a multi-national expedition."

  "Then she's probably the only one left alive."

  "I think now would be a good time to explain what's happened here," Yegor said. He'd just finished taking the temperature of a young girl stricken with fever.

  Ramos shrugged. "Not much to explain. About two weeks ago a series of explosions took out our commo tower, then our rocket, then the garage with all our land vehicles, and finally, the armory."

  "Sabotage?" Nadezhda said.

  "Sure seems like it, though whoever it was left the atomic piles and life support intact. I can't figure that. Anyways, a couple days later people start disappearing without a trace. No bodies, blood, anything. What you see here—" he nodded at the ring of sallow faces around the heating coil "—are all we've been able to round up in the domes. There might be more, but it's tough to search when the people you send out don't come back."

  "What about the crucifixes?" Yegor said.

  "Well, I don't hold much truck with that, personally, but a couple folks claim to have seen a figure crouching in the shadows outside the hotel, with bright eyes—"

  "I've seen him," Elaine put in. "He's real."

  "I'm sure you have, honey. Anyway, your Russian friend here starts in about vampires, and the next thing you know people are hanging crosses on the windows and scrounging for garlic. Pretty superstitious, if you ask me."

  Azarova had shut her eyes and resumed rocking back and forth. She must have seen something horrible, Nadezhda thought, to unbalance her mind so.

  "How soon can you get people out of here?" Ramos said. "Those that want to go, I mean."

  "Soon enough." Nadezhda saw Yegor opening his mouth to speak, and silenced him with a look. "But we should at least make an effort to locate any more survivors, first."

  The com at her wrist crackled. Gennady's voice spoke, his words cut to fragments by static. She adjusted the settings and got an earful of distortion.

  "Someone trying to contact you?" Ramos said.

  "My crewmember, but the walls here must be ferro-concrete. Is there a spot with better reception?"

  "Up on the roof." Ramos nodded towards a staircase off the lounge, leading to the second floor. "There's a maintenance hatch. I'll show—"

  "No need. Yegor, come."

  She was moving before anyone could object, ignoring the suspicious looks as she mounted the steps. Gennady's call had come at an opportune time.

  Yegor spoke as soon as they were out of earshot. "Kapitan, I really must insist you tell me everything. Back on the Sokol, while you slept, I resisted the urge to listen to all of the Admiral's message, but now—"

  "Calm yourself. Let me speak with Gennady, first."

  They reached the second floor and located the maintenance hatch at the end of a long hall lined with suites. A ladder led up to the roof. After a short climb, Nadezhda found herself some twenty meters beneath the dome's apex, the blanketing storm still raging above. She managed to get a clear signal to the Volga on her first try.

  "Just wanted to check in," Gennady explained. "It's kind of lonely out here."

  "We've found survivors, including one of our countrymen. We'll come and get you shortly. Gura out." She closed the channel.

  "Now," Yegor said, his soft voice insistent, "now you'll tell me what's really going on."

  "I suppose you should know, at this point." She had to think for a moment about the best place to start. "Alright. Dr. Azarova really is a spy. The MGB planted her with an archeological expedition, excavating not far from here. Several weeks ago she sent out a coded signal the team may have found a living Martian."

  "You mean—"

  "The so-called 'Last Martian' everyone's been looking for, yes."

  It was his turn to think. "But if they're not all dead …"

  "Aside from scientific concerns, there are nationalistic ones. Foremost: the USSR must be the first to initiate contact. We can't allow the Americans exclusive access to an alien culture."

  "The language alone would be priceless," Yegor agreed, his imagination working. "All those Martian libraries, full of tablets no one's been able to decipher … and the Yanks, with a living Rosetta Stone."

  "Now you understand why we flew here at two G's."

  "Does the Admiral know what happened to the colony?"

  She shook her head. "Radio contact with Chrysetown cut off shortly after Azarova made her report. The two events might be unrelated, but I don't—"

  Footfalls sounded on the rungs of the ladder. Ramos pushed open the hatch and poked his head out.

  "Hate to break up your powwow," he said, his voice trembling, "but we've got trouble. Jimmy's gone."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ramos took off his cowboy hat as he paced, revealing thinning dark hair. "It couldn't have been what, twenty minutes since we left him?" Not far away, Jimmy's shard-thrower leaned against the redoubt wall. Nadezhda picked it up and examined the barrel. Still loaded. "I don't get it," Ramos went on. "Jumpy as the kid is, staying hid behind the curtain, how could anyone sneak up on him?"

  "You don't think he might've wandered somewhere?"

  "Desert his post? Not a chance."

  Yegor cleared his throat. "What about, ah, the demands of nature …?"

  Ramos showed him a galvanized bucket a discrete distance from the pressure doors.

  "An upyr can come and go unseen," quavered Azarova's voice, from the doorway. "Or transform itself into mist …"

  The archeologist had left her protective circle of salt. With tousled hair and glazed eyes, she looked more like an escapee from bedlam than an MGB spy.

  "You need to rest," Nadezhda said, giving her a gentle nudge towards the lounge. "Yegor, see if you've got any tranquilizers in your medkit." Unbalanced as she was, Azarova might start babbling about the Last Martian.

  Ramos clapped his hat back on. "I'm going to go look for him, while the trail's still fresh." He took the shard-thrower from Nadezhda and tucked it through
his belt.

  "I'll come with you." She turned to Yegor. "Stay here and guard the survivors."

  "Kapitan—" he started to object.

  "Remember what's at stake here. I'll contact if I need to."

  Minutes later she and Ramos were scouting the brick plaza, calling Jimmy's name. The storm thinned above them; rays of amber light began to poke through the dust. Ramos looked progressively more worried, pausing to wipe at his forehead or puff out his cheeks and sigh. He nodded towards a prominent tunnel connecting from the east. "That leads to the main dome. Western one's been ruptured, so without a respirator he couldn't have gone there. Assuming our vampire didn't just kill him outright and drag the body."

  "Let's stay with the assumption he's alive."

  "I've known that boy for over three years. Best employee I ever had. And I promised his father, just before he disappeared, I'd do my best to protect him …"

  "Your employee?"

  "Yeah, I'll show you."

  They headed through the eastern tunnel. Like the one leading from the rocket pad, it had a slideway down its length with wall-to-wall advertisements for soft drinks, cigarettes, and beetle-shaped automobiles. Color photos depicted groups of happy Mars tourists, wearing cold weather parkas and respirators, frolicking under a dwarf sun.

  "How many people were here, when the explosions started?" Nadezhda said.

  "Just a couple hundred. It's off-season, on account of the storms. Winter's when the customers start showing up. My fiancé, Donna, was due to come out on the next supply rocket, help me get ready for the rush. Don't think there's going to be a next season, now."

  She could see into the main dome. Most of it was taken up by an enormous metal sculpture of steel girders, with sloping tracks laid out across the top. Gaily colored pennons of red and gold surrounded the structure.

  "I didn't realize you Americans had such reverence for abstract art."

  "What're you talking about?"

  "That." She pointed. "Is it a neo-classical piece? Post- industrial?"

  "You mean the roller coaster? I don't know what 'piece' it is, but you can get a great view from the top, when the storms aren't blowing."

  "A 'roller coaster'?"

  "Yeah, you know. A ride. With Martian gravity, the cars move real fast." He looked at her sidelong. "Jesus, what do you Russians do for fun?"

  "I'm Ukrainian, thank you." After a moment she added: "I'm quite fond of tea."

  "Bunch of hell-raisers, it sounds like."

  "Some of my countrymen enjoy vodka, though I don't like the disorienting effects of alcohol myself."

  "Well, that's more like it. Hey, there she is …"

  They'd reached the end of the tunnel. A line of concession stands and small restaurants surrounded the 'roller coaster.' Prominent was a one-storied building painted in pastel blues, with a neon sign to rival the Howard Johnson's. Bright glass tubes blinked out TACO MARS.

  "My own chain," Ramos said. "Started in Texas, then moved to Arizona. And now, the Red Planet. Cost me every goddamn cent, too. Can't ship beef, of course, that's too pricy, but I grow my own chiles and there's a Martian insect paste that fries up pretty good." He'd been beaming, and now his face fell. "Jimmy's my counterman. Never complains, that boy."

  "We'll find him."

  They moved down onto a little concourse between the shops. A trashcan-sized cylinder with fluted vents stood next to a bench, revolving as air blew out of it. The device spun at a crooked angle, as if someone had tried to knock it over.

  "What's that?" Nadezhda said.

  "Just a ventilator. There's a whole mess of them connected to the central pump."

  "It looks like it's been moved."

  "Yeah, maintenance gets pretty shoddy during the off season."

  "When you sent out search parties, did anyone check the air ducts?"

  Ramos pulled at his lip. "Didn't see any reason to. No one ever goes down there."

  She inspected the ventilator's base. The cylinder was designed to unlock and swing back, presumably allowing access to the duct underneath. The locking mechanism hadn't been fully engaged. Someone careless, or in a hurry.

  "Help me with this," she said, throwing a latch.

  "What about Jimmy?"

  "Humor me."

  Together, they eased the cylinder back. Sure enough, a circular hatch wide enough to crawl through opened onto a horizontal shaft. Nadezhda activated the lamp in her vacc suit's right forearm.

  "You're going down there?"

  "It's only a meter drop. I don't even need a ladder."

  She lowered herself into the shaft. A strong cross-current immediately rustled her braids. She shone the lamp's beam to her left, down a tube of receding darkness. She shone it to the right—

  "Mr. Ramos, come down here, now."

  The cone of light picked out what first looked like a wrinkled leather bag, leaning against the side of the shaft a short distance away. Nadezhda knew better, even as she squatted for a closer look. The 'leather' was mummified skin, tight around a package of yellowed bones. Including a human skull. Long strands of black hair and clothing fibers had been mixed in with the general mess.

  Ramos climbed down behind her. She could hear his breathing go shallow as he leaned past her shoulder to take a look. Gagging followed.

  "If you're going to vomit," she said, "please do so in the other direction."

  "I'll be … I'll be alright."

  She shone the lamp farther down the right side. More corpses. Dozens of them, stacked like kindling for the winter. Her memory flashed to childhood; she recalled the old barn she used to play in, near the shore of Lake Svityaz in Western Ukraine. A family of owls lived in the rafters, peering down at her with bright yellow eyes. Strewn among the desiccated straw on the barn's floor were hundreds of gray-furred lumps that had once been mice, before being passed through the owls' gullets. That's what these bodies reminded her of. Castings.

  "Mr. Ramos," she said, "I'm not familiar with Martian predators. Are there any animals that could do this, if they somehow got inside the domes?"

  His dusky skin had turned ashen. "There's sippee beetles. About the size of your fist. They can swarm people when they're hungry, try to suck out all their bodily fluids. The end result might look something like … this. But I don't see any bite marks. And we've never had any inside the colony."

  "Beetles that size couldn't stash bodies." She began to poke through the clothing on the nearest corpse.

  "What're you doing?"

  "Looking for identification."

  "Well, don't. That's Alice Crenshaw. I'd recognize her hair anywhere. She ran the Sno Cone concession."

  Nadezhda pointed with the lamp. "We can follow this duct and see if it leads to more bodies."

  Ramos shook his head. "Look, lady, I don't know what you're made of, but I'm getting claustrophobic down here. We can come back later and make sure these folks get decent burials. Right now, I want to keep looking for Jimmy."

  "What if he's in these ducts?"

  "If he is, then he's probably a corpse, and I don't think I can handle that."

  Soft-living Westerner. But then again, he hadn't just been through a bloodbath on Ceres. "Alright. We'll go back up."

  They climbed out onto the concourse. Ramos was shivering, and not from the temperature. She cupped her hands to call out Jimmy's name, but stopped. Someone was waving to them from the base of the roller coaster.

  "Jimmy!" Ramos shouted.

  She ran after the tall man. Gooseflesh prickled her forearms; she'd felt certain, after finding the bodies, that Jimmy was dead and the search futile, something to make Ramos feel like he'd tried. But that was Jimmy, alright, no question.

  Ramos gave him a bear-hug. His relief gave way to anger the next moment. "What the hell were you doing? How many times have I told you we've got to all stay together, within earshot? You didn't even take your gun …"

  "I saw him," Jimmy said, his voice forlorn.

  "Saw who? And don
't tell me 'vampire,' or I'll—"

  "D-dad." Tears broke.

  "What're you talking about?" Ramos said. "You saw your old man?"

  "He came up to the front of the hotel. Didn't say anything, didn't come inside. Just waved like he wanted me to follow, so I …"

  "You're sure it was him?"

  "Had to be. He was dressed the same way he was when he—the day he disappeared."

  "Alright." Ramos shot Nadezhda a look that said he didn't believe any of this. "What happened to him?"

  "I don't know. I followed him all the way out here, and he just … vanished. Walked behind a support, and he was gone." Jimmy swiped tears away. "Ray, could he have been a ghost? Do you think that's what I saw?"

  "I think I've had you on sentry duty too long, without enough breaks." To Nadezhda he said: "Can your medic take a look at him?"

  "Of course. We should be heading back, now. Though I'd like to return soon, and look for more bodies."

  Jimmy straightened. "Bodies?"

  "I'll explain it to you later," Ramos said. "After you've had a chance to rest."

  Overhead the storm was finally dying. Emaciated sunlight bore down through the dome's hexagonal panels, treating Nadezhda to her first grounds-eye view of the Chryse Planitia. Flat as a lakebed, with the same russet sand she'd spotted from the air. Monotonous—except for the five towers of striated basalt rising in the distance, like skeletal fingers. She drew an appreciative breath.

  "Like that?" Ramos said. "Those are the cairn towers, the reason this colony was built in the first place."

  "Ruins?"

  "The most intact on Mars."

  She noted the towers' attenuated shapes, almost spindly. They didn't look like something that could withstand centuries of wind erosion and tectonic activity. "Strange architecture for a settlement."

  "Oh, that's no settlement," Ramos said. "That's a tomb."

  CHAPTER SIX

  The little band of survivors seemed both elated and surprised to see Jimmy still alive. Ramos didn't mention finding the bodies. He declared the front lobby too dangerous for sentries, and put an extra watch from the second floor windows. Dr. Azarova, meanwhile, appeared to be making a remarkable recovery.