In the Red

by Christopher Swiedler

  They took a few cautious steps forward and peered down. The perfect ninety-degree angle of the ledge dropped ten meters down to a rock floor. On the far wall, at the bottom of the cave, a tunnel led deeper into the glacier. The ledge, the floor below, and the tunnel were all perfectly smooth, as if they’d been carved by a laser. Near the entrance to the tunnel, an ancient digging robot sat hunched over, glistening with a sheen of ice.

  “This must be part of the old water-mining operation,” Michael said.

  Lilith nodded excitedly. “Which means that tunnel has to lead to the station.”

  “It might lead to the station,” Michael said. He stared at the passageway uneasily. What if they got lost down here? What if one of them got hurt? What if he panicked again?

  But maybe Lilith was right. If they just waited for help, they might be stuck here until the flare ended.

  On one side, the ice had been cut away right up to the rock wall of the cave. Lilith found handholds and footholds and started to descend. When she was almost to the ground, she jumped off the wall. Her boots kicked up a tiny splash of water as she landed. Michael jumped down next to her and they inspected the mining robot. Its head was bent as if it were sleeping. It had two long, straight, fingerless arms like the blades of a forklift.

  “This guy hasn’t been used in a long time,” Lilith said.

  Michael knelt down and examined the floor of the cave. Little rivulets of water were flowing through cracks and channels in the rock, eventually converging in a wide, shallow stream that flowed into the tunnel. He pressed his hand against the rock floor. Even through his gloves he could feel that it was warm.

  Hypothesis: something was heating the rock below and melting the ice. But what was generating all of that heat? He couldn’t come up with a single explanation that made any sense.

  “There’s no way this should be happening,” he said.

  “Shoulds and oughts and turkey trots,” Lilith said. “That’s something my aunt used to say. It means—”

  “I get what it means.” He followed the tiny streams of water until they converged into a wide, shallow pool around the mining robot’s feet and then flowed out of the cave and down the tunnel.

  “Where is all the water going?” Lilith asked. “I mean, it has to go somewhere, right?”

  “I think we should find out.”

  They started down the tunnel. For a hundred meters or so, the passage was straight and almost level, and the water was only deep enough to make a quiet, rhythmic splashing as they walked. Soon the tunnel met up with a wider passage, and the water grew deeper. After a few dozen meters it was running around their ankles in a strong current, and Michael’s legs were getting tired from the effort of sloshing ahead.

  How far would it be to the station? The glacier was a kilometer or so across. They’d come about half that distance so far, but was it in the right direction?

  “Do you hear that?” Lilith asked. “It sounds like the ocean.”

  Michael listened. She was right. What he’d thought was just static from his radio was clearly the sound of rushing water. After a couple of minutes, the sound was noticeably louder and the water at their feet had risen another twenty centimeters. Abruptly, the tunnel opened up into another large cavern. They stood at the opening of a new cave and looked around.

  This cave was much wider than the previous one, with a dome-shaped roof that was at least seventy or eighty meters across. Even with their headlamps turned up to their most powerful settings, they couldn’t see the far wall. It seemed to be a nexus or hub, with several other tunnels converging on this one spot. The floor was covered in a knee-deep pool of water that was being fed by streams from the various tunnels. Chunks of ice floated in the pool, some as big as small houses. Water plunged out of a meter-wide gap near the center of the ceiling, churning the pool into a white froth.

  “The whole glacier is melting,” Michael said. He still didn’t understand what was happening, but the more he saw, the more worried he got.

  “We already know there’s nothing back the way we came,” Lilith said. “One of these tunnels must lead to the station. We just have to figure out which one. Don’t you have a compass or anything?”

  “The magnetic field failed, remember? I can’t . . .”

  He trailed off. The planetary magnetic field had failed. But somewhere nearby, underneath the station, was one of the inducers: a massive, quantum-entangled electromagnet. Were they close enough for the inducer itself to attract a compass?

  With a loud crack, a piece of ice in the ceiling broke away and collapsed into the pool of water. Lilith grabbed onto Michael, and they braced themselves against the waist-high waves that sloshed all around. The gap in the ceiling was now almost two meters wide, and water was pouring out in a gigantic white column.

  “Wherever we’re going, we need to go fast,” Lilith shouted over the roar of the water.

  He pulled up the navigation display on his wrist unit. The compass needle swiveled aimlessly. For a moment it swung toward his left and held still before wandering around again. Michael sloshed through the water toward a tunnel on the left side of the cavern, and the needle snapped into place. He turned around completely, but the needle remained pointing at the left-hand tunnel no matter which way he faced.

  “That way,” he said. “I think.”

  Lilith splashed past him and took a few steps into the tunnel. Like the other passages, it was man-made and perfectly straight, but with a noticeable upward slope. An ankle-deep stream of water flowed down into the pool they were standing in.

  Another chunk of ice collapsed into the pool. “Come on,” Lilith said, grabbing his arm and pulling him into the tunnel.

  The beams of their headlamps stretched out into the darkness ahead. The water flowing back down toward the cave sucked at their boots, adding effort to each step. After a few minutes Michael’s legs were aching, but there was still no sign of another cave or even a bend in the passage. He stopped, breathing heavily, and leaned against the wall.

  “How far have we come?” Lilith asked, shining her light back down the tunnel.

  “I don’t know,” Michael panted, wishing he had Earth-born muscles like her. She’d hardly broken a sweat. “Maybe a hundred—”

  The floor under their feet rumbled briefly. They glanced at each other and, without saying a word, started climbing again. Michael’s legs screamed in protest but he pushed himself onward.

  From somewhere behind them came a deep, echoing boom, and a moment later a strong gust of air rushed past them. Michael stumbled and Lilith grabbed his arm to keep him from falling.

  “Keep going!” Lilith shouted. Michael’s lungs burned as they scrambled through the tunnel. Was it growing smaller, tighter, steeper? There was no space around him, nowhere to move, nothing to breathe . . .

  Suddenly the passage emptied out into another natural cave. Michael put his hands on his knees and gasped for air. This room was smaller than the last, and it had only two tunnels intersecting it. A rusted forklift sat against one wall next to a pile of crates. He checked his compass. This time it pointed toward the tunnel on the opposite side of the room without hesitation.

  “We’re getting closer,” he gasped.

  They jogged up the far tunnel. The water surged around their calves. Michael shone his light up the passage. They were climbing higher—how was the water getting deeper? Was there another flooded room ahead of them?

  He turned around and looked back they way they’d come. Somehow, the water behind them was rising. But how was that possible?

  The pieces of the puzzle clicked together in his mind, and immediately that familiar black terror rose up again. He could suddenly picture the immense weight of the glacier pressing down all around them as its lower levels slowly melted and collapsed, driving the water lever higher and higher until it had filled every possible space. . . .

  “Run!” he shouted.

  But running was impossible. The water was almost up to their
knees now, and all they could do was slosh forward as quickly as they could. The muscles in Michael’s legs threatened to cramp, but he pushed himself on. Ten meters, twenty meters . . .

  Then the passage ended so abruptly that Michael had to put his hands out to keep from smacking into the wall. It was flat and smooth, like someone had sealed the tunnel off.

  No, he thought. It can’t end like this.

  Lilith looked around frantically. The beam of her headlamp reflected off something metallic on the side of the tunnel. She sloshed over to the wall and opened a small panel, revealing a row of buttons and pressure gauges. Michael and Lilith froze for a moment, both suddenly realizing what they were looking at: the control systems for an airlock.

  Lilith smacked the green cycle button with her fist. The flat wall in front of them split in two and started to slide open. Water poured through the gap into the airlock. But when the door had opened only about twenty centimeters, the control panel on the wall erupted in a shower of sparks, and the door shuddered and stopped.

  Michael and Lilith pulled at the door futilely with their fingers. Michael turned himself sideways and tried to squeeze inside, but his helmet was too wide to fit through the gap. Lilith jabbed the buttons on the control panel frantically. Behind them, the sound of the rising water was a dull roar that grew louder and louder with each passing second.

  Michael stretched his arm through the door and tried to reach the control panel on the far wall of the airlock, but his fingers clawed at empty air. A large chunk of ice struck the airlock door next to him and splintered into a dozen smaller fragments.

  “We have to get this door open!” Lilith shouted.

  Michael’s eyes latched onto the pressure gauge in the airlock, which was showing twenty thousand pascals—almost five times higher than normal for Mars’s thin atmosphere. Could that be correct? He checked his wrist display, but it gave the same reading.

  Hypothesis, he thought suddenly. The rising water is pushing the air into a smaller and smaller space, causing the pressure to rise. And if that was the case, then he knew how he could get inside the airlock.

  “I’m going to take off my helmet!” he yelled.

  Lilith’s mouth hung open. “You’re going to do what?”

  Michael double-checked his calculations. Twenty thousand pascals was dangerous, but it wasn’t deadly. Without his helmet, he’d be able to squeeze through the gap in the doors. As long as he could hold his breath long enough to get the airlock working again, he’d survive.

  And if he couldn’t, they were dead anyway.

  His first problem was how to remove his helmet. He couldn’t just yank it off and climb through. His suit was set to seventy thousand pascals, and the sudden drop in pressure would be like a bomb going off. He turned the manual-release valve on his collar until he could hear the hiss of air escaping. His ears popped and a warning light flashed on the inside of his helmet. He ignored it and opened the valve farther. His suit tightened around his body as the air inside bled out into the tunnel.

  “Whatever you’re doing, do it fast,” Lilith pleaded.

  She was right—the water was up to their waists, and he didn’t have time to make this slow and easy. He opened the valve another half turn. When the pressure in his suit had reached thirty thousand pascals, he pulled the release lever on his collar.

  There was a loud whoosh as the rest of the air in his suit rushed out all at once. His ears exploded in pain. He yanked off his helmet and shoved it into Lilith’s hands and slipped through the opening in the doors. He found the override switch on the airlock control panel and jerked it downward.

  The doors slid open. Water flooded into the airlock, sweeping Lilith inside. Michael sagged against the wall, his lungs screaming for oxygen. Lilith slid his helmet over his head, and he fumbled to clasp it shut. She pushed his hands out of the way and snapped it into his collar. Immediately he felt a cool rush of air against his face as his suit began to repressurize.

  “Close it,” he gasped, pointing at the panel.

  Lilith pressed a button on the control panel, and the door started to slide shut. With a loud crash, a person-sized slab of ice crashed against the airlock and wedged itself in the gap between the door and the frame. The door ground against the ice for a moment, and then it stopped.

  “Push!” Lilith shouted. Her voice was faint and far-off. She threw herself against the ice, but her feet couldn’t get any traction. Michael put his feet against the wall and pressed his back against hers. Together they pushed the chunk of ice back a few centimeters, and then a few more. With a loud crack, the ice broke into two pieces and slipped out into the passage. A moment later the doors slid shut.

  Outside, more chunks of ice crashed against the airlock door. The sound of the rushing water rose in pitch until the tunnel filled completely and everything was silent. Michael blinked and shook his head, trying get his senses to return to normal.

  He pushed the button to start the airlock cycle and open the inner doors. The control panel beeped and flashed an error message. Michael stared at the display in shock.

  “No,” Lilith said. “No, no, no. Don’t tell me the airlock isn’t working.”

  “The airlock is fine,” he said. “But . . . there’s no air on the other side.”

  “What do you mean? How could there not be any air?”

  Michael swallowed hard. “The station had a pressure breach.”

  8

  “PRESSURE BREACH?” LILITH repeated.

  Quickly, Michael searched for the override command on the control panel. The inner doors slid open and water flooded out in a long cascade, revealing a long, dimly lit corridor. Shards of glass from the overhead light bars littered the floor. Reddish-brown dust hung in thick, motionless clouds On the wall next to the airlock was a poster of a suited woman with the caption Safety First.

  This wasn’t an accident. It was a disaster.

  Lilith saw the expression on his face. “Don’t worry. I’m sure everyone is fine.”

  He nodded almost imperceptibly, and they stepped out into the hallway. In the dust-filled air, the beams from their headlamps seemed solid enough to touch. The first doorway opened onto an airlock prep room. Most of the suits were gone from the walls, and a box of emergency supplies had been pulled out and dumped onto the floor. The second room was filled with a jumble of equipment, some of it clearly left over from the station’s water-mining days: rope, jackhammers, drills, fusion torches. A cart filled with wires, clamps, and diagnostic equipment bore a hand-lettered sign: Personal Property of James Lee.

  They followed the corridor down to a large room that had been carved from solid rock. At the far end of the room, a gigantic floor-to-ceiling window looked out onto the plains below. The glass from the window had been shattered, and clouds of dust blew in through the opening. Stairways ran up to a second floor and down into a basement area, and two other corridors like the one they’d come through led back into the ice cap. In the center of the room was a long plastic table, some chairs, and an L-shaped couch. The chairs and table had been knocked over, and dishes were scattered over the floor. A thin layer of red dust covered everything in sight.

  Michael felt dizzy. He recognized this as the station’s common area. Sometimes when his dad called, he would be sitting on that couch or leaning against the window. There were always people visible in the background, talking and working and laughing. Now it looked . . . dead.

  Lilith stepped carefully across the broken glass and inspected the shattered window. Outside, the sun was close to setting, and the craggy surface of the northern plains glowed like a blood-red sea. Michael stood in the shadow of the window frame and peered down. Ten meters below was a narrow path that was barely big enough for a rover. Past that, a steep drop led to a crevasse where glittering white ice from the glacier wound back and forth like a frozen river.

  “I don’t get it,” Lilith said. “What could have done this? It’s like a bomb went off in the middle of the station.”<
br />
  Michel picked up a small fragment of window. It was old-fashioned plexiglass, not transplastic, but still, it would have taken a lot of force to shatter it like this. Lilith was right—something had exploded.

  But what?

  “I don’t know,” Michael said, pulling at her arm. “But stay out of the sunlight as much as you can.”

  “Right,” Lilith said, stepping away from the window. “Lethal radiation and all that.”

  They split up and each searched one of the two wings of the lower level.

  Michael found a laboratory that looked like it hadn’t been used in years along with a couple of storage rooms filled with food and other supplies. At the end of the corridor was another airlock like the one they’d come through. Its gauge showed extremely high air pressure on the other side. Because it’s not air, he thought. It’s water. All of the tunnels that led into the glacier had probably flooded by now.

  Lilith met him as he ran back to the hub. “I found the kitchen,” she said. “Some jars of spaghetti sauce burst. I thought it was blood.”

  The dishes on the floor of the common area rattled as a tremor ran through the station. Lilith looked at Michael worriedly. “I don’t like this.”

  On the second floor they found three more corridors and a communal bath area. Water dripped from one of the showerheads, and shreds of toilet paper were scattered everywhere. Lilith poked her head into the first doorway in one of the corridors. She gasped.

  “Bodies.”

  Michael pushed past her. The room was a small clinic. The floors and walls were all painted white, and there was a raised operating table in the middle of the room. Two beds with privacy curtains sat against one wall. On the opposite side of the room, a white sheet had been laid out. Four bodies, two men and two women, were lying on the sheet. Their faces were blue and covered with a thin layer of frost.

  Michael’s heart stopped. Neither of the men was his father, but he kept looking back and forth between them as if he were worried that one of their faces might morph into his dad’s at any moment. His knees felt weak.