Pale Mars

by Garnett Elliott

  "There's the more immediate problem of getting back to the domes. But I think—"

  The tent's airlock flaps parted, admitting Ramos. "Found something, you two. Pretty damn important, I figure. Have a look."

  He led them out, behind the tent where more supplies had been stacked in plastic crates. One of the containers was bright yellow with the word 'EXPLOSIVES' stenciled across the side. It had been opened.

  "That explains how she blew up the Volga," Nadezhda said, hunkering down to look inside. Three spherical charges, about the size of a parcel post, were nestled tight in foam indentations. At least a dozen more spaces lay empty. "What do you think, Gennady?"

  "Hmmm. Tovex, it looks like. The archeology team probably used them to clear rubble."

  "There's a whole bunch missing."

  "It'd only take one to handle the Volga, if she put it in the right place."

  She turned to Ramos. "Someone could've brought the charges to Chrysetown, destroyed the communication tower and rocket."

  "You figure it was our vampire?"

  "It could've been Azarova, for all we know. I don't think any of the team here was in their right mind."

  "They probably started out sane enough," Gennady said, glancing around at the hieroglyph-covered walls. "If we stay here, that'll be our fate, too."

  "You were about to say something about getting back," she said.

  He showed her the damaged crawler. A cable snaked from the exposed engine battery to a pump apparatus along the side of the tent.

  "She's been using the crawler to power the tent's compressor," he said, withdrawing a slender voltmeter from his pocket. "Probably ran out of fuel for the site's generator. Let me check … yes, still drawing enough. Barely, but enough."

  "Enough for what?"

  "To drive this thing back to the colony, kapitan. I know it looks bad, but all these torn wires can be spliced. Though I recommend shutting down the tent's compressor. It'll be uncomfortable, but we need the power."

  She'd anticipated having to walk back to Chrysetown, possibly through storms and hostile fauna. Though Azarova had made it, the trip would take precious time. Now her engineer could obviate all that. She felt a twinge of guilt for slapping him. "How long do you think it will take?"

  "Hard to say." He started pulling more tools out of his pocket. "But I'll keep at it, the rest of the night if I have to. When I try to sleep here I just get bad dreams."

  * * *

  Without the compressor, the fire in the tent soon smoldered and died. Nadezhda's vacc suit had its own heat source, but Ramos wore only coveralls. She found a thermal blanket and draped it over both of them. "Heat will conduct out from my suit's coils," she explained. "In Russia, babushkas used to set a brick on the stove and slip it under their dress to stay warm. Same principle here."

  Ramos edged a little closer under the blanket. Though he wore a respirator, the corners of his eyes lifted in what was likely a sly grin. "Well now, I suppose this is your chance to make a move."

  "Excuse me?"

  "A move. You know, like—ah, forget it." His eyes drooped again.

  "Is that what you Americans call a 'pass'?"

  "Can you blame a guy for trying? I haven't seen Donna in over two years, and well … you are a redhead, after all."

  "I don't see what that has to do with anything."

  "Nah, you probably wouldn't."

  She made sure her sigh was audible through her mask. "Though I find you quite charming in a rustic sense, Mr. Ramos, I hardly think our situation here would lend itself to romance."

  "Yeah, yeah." After a moment he said: "It's my paunch, isn't it?"

  "Your paunch?"

  "It's the lower gravity, see. Makes you fat. Back on Earth, I was lean as a whip. Had to fight the gals off with a stick."

  She patted him on the shoulder. "I'm sure you did, Ray. I'm sure you did."

  * * *

  By sunup, Gennady had the crawler working. He fitted the hood back in place and loaded the remaining explosive charges. "Just in case," he said. The crawler's cabin was long, but narrow. For power considerations they left it unpressurized and unheated. Gennady executed a three-point turn to get them out of the chamber and bumping along the entrance tunnel, into the basin's bright daylight. The crawler's six tires made short work of the ramp.

  As soon as they climbed up into the forest of mushroom-shaped trees the Geiger counter on Nadezhda's wrist started clicking. "That'll be the Volga," she said. "Must be leaking deuterium. Gennady, give us the widest berth possible."

  He nosed the crawler between trees, making a semi-circle around the area where the wrecked boat lay. Their new vehicle felt sluggish, but it carried them faster than walking. After ten minutes they'd cleared the trees and were on the hard-packed road leading back to Chrysetown. Sunlight gleamed off the colony's domes in the distance.

  "You've got an ETA?" Nadezhda said.

  "About an hour and a half." Gennady eyed the gauges. "We're a little under optimum speed."

  They passed the little valleys filled with ochre moss Nadezhda had spotted from the air. Her slower, grounds-eye vantage revealed something else; bulbous cacti, with tough-looking scarlet skin and long needles.

  "Polyp cactus," Ramos said, after she'd pointed them out. "They inflate during the day and hide beneath the ground at night. Sippee beetles eat the fruit, among other things."

  A few minutes later Nadezhda saw a giant gray millipede slipping behind a boulder. Hard to say whether it'd be dangerous or not, but she felt grateful for the cabin's enclosure. Compared to the squirming fecundity of Venus, Mars had first seemed a morgue-planet, though now she was gaining an appreciation for the subtlety of life here. Where did their vampire-stalker fit in? Some kind of apex predator?

  She pondered as they drove.

  Close to midway through the plains, the domes growing steadily larger, she found another reason to be grateful for the crawler. A second storm, this one blowing in from the southeast. Not as tall as the haboob from the previous day, but still bad enough to mean disaster if they'd been caught in the open. As it was, Gennady had to switch on the vehicle's radar when the curtain of sand descended.

  "That's the colony, clear as day," he said, pointing to a bright blob on the screen. "A little blowing dirt won't stop us."

  "Your efforts are definitely going into my report," she said.

  "Good to see I can impress you with something."

  The storm had ebbed by the time they reached the domes, allowing Gennady to spot the landing pad. He parked the crawler squarely in the middle, right where the Volga had landed. Nadezhda tried to raise Yegor on her wrist com, but got only static.

  "Must be the hotel blocking the signal again," she said.

  They managed to open and then shut the tricky pressure door without losing a limb. Back in the comfortable air, surrounded by muzak and gaudy capitalism, Nadezhda had to admit she felt better. The Martian architecture had been slowly worming into her brain. Advertisements, at least, provided some relief from the monotony of black stone.

  Ramos grew more restless the closer they got to the hotel. "I've never been away this long from the group. They must be antsy by now. You've seen enough to start evacuating people?"

  "Once we can get a message to my ship, yes." Though how she'd accomplish that remained a good question. As far as the Admiral's orders went, she saw no point in trying to establish relations with an alien intent on eating people. "What about you? Do you still want to remain behind with your restaurant?"

  "Ever since we found those bodies in the air duct, I've been fixing to leave. Hell, I've got property insurance."

  "Good to hear."

  They entered the dome and saw someone had switched off the hotel's neon sign. Ramos looked perturbed. Glass doors slid back, admitting them to the familiar orange and blue lobby.

  Ramos parted the curtain. "Holy shit."

  The pressure doors leading to the longue were wide open.

  CHAPTER NINE
<
br />   They found Yegor lying face down next to the heating coil, alive but unconscious, his vacc suit, glasses, and Topchev gone. No trace of the other half-dozen survivors. Supplies and mattress pads remained as before, with no signs of a struggle. "Goddamn it, you told me your man would protect them," Ramos said, his eyes scrunched like he was about to cry. "I should've never gone with you. Hell, I should've never let you people in here."

  "Calm down." Nadezhda had Yegor's medkit out and was searching his body for contusions.

  "The hell I will! I just lost all my people. Jimmy and Elaine … if I'd stayed here this wouldn't have happened. But I had to go galloping out to the cairns, try to rescue some crazy woman who gets herself killed anyways. Goddamn commies. I swear to you, I get out of this—"

  "Ray," Nadezhda said.

  "—I'm going on live TV, tell the whole world you Russians are nothing but no-good—"

  "Ray." She nodded to Gennady, who seized Ramos by the left arm. The hypogun hissed.

  Ramos let out a wheezing breath. His shoulders slumped. The redness coloring his cheeks lightened to its usual tone, and Gennady helped him sit.

  "Excitable Americans," Nadezhda said. "When the glorious Revolution comes to your country, the first thing to do is tranquilize your water supply."

  Ramos's face split with a vacant smile. "I forgot what I was getting so riled about."

  "Your people are missing."

  "Oh."

  Nadezhda took a vial of ammonia from the medkit and waved it under Yegor's nostrils. It didn't have the immediate effect she'd expected; after a few seconds his eyelids fluttered, and slowly opened.

  "Nadia …?"

  "I'm here, Yegor. You're alright."

  "Kapitan, I don't …"

  "Take a moment to think. What's the last thing you remember?"

  Without glasses, his eyes seemed larger than they should. His pupils lost focus. "Someone was yelling, I remember that. I saw a shadow. Very tall."

  "Are you injured? I couldn't find a mark on you."

  "I'm afraid … I'm afraid I may have fainted."

  Ramos let out a snort. "I always knew you Reds were yellow," he said, still smiling.

  "Hush." Nadezhda returned her attention to Yegor. "Any idea what could've happened to the survivors?"

  "They're gone?"

  "We couldn't find any of them. And the front door was open."

  "I don't remember anyone opening it. Maybe—maybe they escaped that way."

  "Escaped what?"

  He rubbed at his temples.

  She stood up, trying to keep her frustration from showing. "You need to rest awhile, with Mr. Ramos. Gennady and I will search the hotel again."

  They'd already resealed and locked the pressure doors. She had the nagging certainty they wouldn't find anything, but went through the motions anyway, looking under beds, in closets, checking windows and even the maintenance hatch leading to the roof. Nothing.

  "How could it get in?" Gennady said, slumping onto a stool in the coffee shop. "The pressure doors weren't forced. Do you think they unlocked them and just invited the vampire inside? Can it walk through walls?"

  "There's something we're missing," Nadezhda said. You'll never see him coming. Why? She thought again of the multi-limbed, multi-faced mosaic in the antechamber. Her brain was trying to make some connection, but it hovered just beyond consciousness.

  "So what do we do now?"

  "We search for the survivors, of course. If we can't find them above ground, I want to try the air ducts. You remember all those remains, in the pyramid chamber? I don't think our vampire killed the Martians there. I think it stalked them, one by one, and brought the bodies back."

  "A lone hunter, returning to its lair."

  "That's my theory."

  "And what if we find it?"

  "We kill it."

  The Last Martian be damned. This was simple survival, now.

  * * *

  Gennady brewed coffee in the shop's attached kitchen; Nadezhda opted for tea. She had to use several packets of the American brand to get it strong enough, and even then it lacked the savor of smoked lapsang. But tea was tea, and the amber fluid got her mind working again. Several cups of Gennady's coffee brought Yegor and Ramos out of their respective stupors as well. "Can you recall anything else now, Yegor?" she asked.

  He shook his head. "It's still muddled."

  "Think. Can you recall how you lost your vacc suit, at least? Your weapon?"

  "Forget that," Ramos put in, some of his pre-tranquilized mood returning, "how come he was spared, when everyone else is gone?"

  "We'll find them, Ray," she said.

  "Damn right we will."

  "Does this complex have a public address system? There's always music playing in the background."

  "Main dome. Same one I took you to before. They use it to announce tour departures, fire drills, that sort of thing."

  "We could send a message to any survivors, telling them to meet us at a certain spot."

  "The vampire will hear, too," Gennady pointed out.

  "You think it understands English?"

  "The hotel's been compromised," Ramos said. "We should have them regroup at Taco Mars. It's defensible enough, and there's plenty of food in the freezer."

  "Alright," Nadezhda said, sliding off her stool. "That sounds good a place as any. We'll go to the PA system first, then your restaurant. Let's get moving before we lose any more time."

  They grabbed up various supplies. No one seemed sad to be leaving the Howard Johnson's. It was a short, but suspenseful walk from the hotel to the main dome. Nadezhda felt acutely aware of having one less Topchev. The roller coaster looked like a gaunt steel skeleton against the backdrop of the distant cairn towers. Ramos steered them towards the Taco Mars building, in the shadow of the giant structure.

  "There's a store room where we can put everything," he said, fumbling keys out of his pocket. "And the oven keeps the kitchen nice and—"

  He noticed it the same time Nadezhda did: the spinning ventilator, atop the air duct. It was crooked again.

  Nadezhda set down the bedroll she'd been carrying. "I know I closed that correctly, last time."

  "Someone's been here since," Ramos said.

  She gave him a long look. "Ray, we need to go down there."

  He swallowed.

  "What about the PA system?" Yegor said.

  "This has priority. There's a possibility the creature is using air ducts as a sort of … pantry. If it captured anyone they might be in there, somewhere." She didn't add 'alive' because she didn't believe it. But this was a chance to corner the thing where it hid, instead of waiting to be attacked.

  Yegor still wasn't convinced. "Maybe two of us should go down there, and the other two find the PA system."

  "No more splitting up," Nadezhda said, emphatic.

  "I don't like the idea any better than you," Ramos said to Yegor, "but if Jimmy or the others might still be kicking, I'm going after them."

  "It's an order, not a proposition." Nadezhda knelt next to the ventilator and unlocked the latch, before tilting the whole unit back. A stiff breeze blew up.

  "Won't we be vulnerable in a confined space?" Gennady said.

  "I'll take one end and you the other. With our Topchevs set for full dispersal we can burn anything that tries to approach." She clicked on her forearm lamp and shone it along the shaft. A short drop, and her boots touched the bottom. She moved ahead to accommodate the rest of the group.

  "There are bodies just over here," she warned, sparing a second look at the black-haired mummy of Alice Crenshaw. The corpses had been placed in a single row against the wall, allowing space to shuffle past. The shaft's height, though, meant they either had to crawl or duck-walk. Not an easy way to cover distance. "Ray, do you have any idea which direction we should head?"

  "Backwards leads to the western dome, I think. That should've cinched off as soon as it lost pressure. Forward will take us to the pumping station, eventually."


  "Forward, then."

  She opted to duck-walk. It allowed her to keep the forearm light—and the drawn Topchev—out in front of her. Withered faces seemed to leer as she crept past. Ramos could probably recognize each one, but he kept his mouth shut. She heard his labored breathing from having to walk with knees bent. At least he wasn't gagging this time. And Gennady, the fearful Sensitive, seemed to be holding up better than before.

  At three meters the row of bodies stopped. A short distance later they reached a four-way intersection. Ramos didn't know what to make of it. She shone her lamp left, right, and straight ahead, not liking the idea of being flanked in the darkness. "I say we should keep going forward."

  "Ah, give me a minute, will you?" Ramos said. "My ankles are killing me."

  They clambered on after resting, until Nadezhda's own thighs ached and her forelegs began to cramp. Maybe coming down here wasn't such a good idea. Their quarry was clever; it could've left the ventilator crooked on purpose, in order to draw them into a trap. From the grumbling and muttering going on behind, the rest of the group were second-guessing her decision, too.

  Then: her light flickered across something, straight ahead. A large fan, stretching the width of the duct. But the blades had frozen. She ran her lamp around the fan's midsection, where the motor should be. Stray wires poked out.

  Disabled.

  She pushed a blade aside and crawled through. The duct opened onto a large, round chamber, saturated with high oxygen. She could tell by the sudden upsurge in her mood. A tower of hoses, pumps, ventilator grills, and throbbing motors occupied the chamber's center, whirring away as it sucked in thin Martian air from outside and condensed it into something more breathable. In essence, a giant respirator. All along the walls fans like the one she'd just crawled through spun, circulating life. An explosive charge placed here could've wiped out Chrysetown in one blow. But that wasn't their hunter's plan, was it?

  Only faint, winking lights illuminated the place. The floor looked uneven, covered with lumpen shapes, and before her lamp beam confirmed it she'd guessed why. Bodies. Hundreds, just as in the pyramid chamber. She could smell them over the rich air; musty, like old newspapers or aging books in an archive.