And when he did find Lilith—how was he going to find his way back? Visibility was so bad that he could pass right by the station without knowing. He needed a way to navigate in the darkness.
“Lilith!” he screamed, more from frustration than anything else. Even if she was awake, she was too far away to hear him.
He sat down in the doorway. Think, he told himself. You need a plan. How to find Lilith, and how to find your way back.
An idea came to him. He thought a little more, turning it over in his head. Yes, it could work. He’d seen what he needed inside the station. But it was risky.
Maybe someone will find me here soon, he thought. Maybe there’s a big search party on its way now. They’ll find me, and they’ll find Lilith, and we’ll both be safe.
Maybe. It was possible. But he didn’t have time to wait around. If Lilith was still out there when the sun came up, she wouldn’t last long. He had to find her and get her to Milankovic as soon as possible.
You have your plan, he told himself. Now do it.
He turned and went into the station and found the emergency kit. He counted out the flares: sixteen of them, wrapped together like a bundle of magic wands. He stuffed them into the pockets of his suit and went back outside. He took one flare and snapped off one end. A bright spark like a miniature star appeared where he had broken it.
He set off into the darkness, counting his steps carefully. After fifty steps he turned and looked back. He could just barely make out the lights in the doorway of the station. He jammed the flare into the ground so that the burning part stuck up like a flag, and then he used his finger to draw an arrow in the dirt pointing back toward the station. He set out more flares every fifty steps until he had four of them laid out in a straight line that led all the way back to the pumping station.
One direction covered. He followed the flares back to the doorway and set out three more lines at ninety degrees from each other, so that the flares formed a gigantic cross with the pumping station at the center.
He took a deep breath. Now he was ready. In theory, as long as he didn’t wander too far from the station, he would eventually see one of the flares, and he could follow his way back.
In theory.
He walked in a slow curve, keeping the station to his left. When he’d gone a hundred steps, and he still hadn’t seen the next flare, he started to get frantic. Could it already have burned out? If his plan didn’t work, he’d be wandering out here until his air filter became saturated again and the CO2 in his suit killed him.
Michael turned off his headlamp and closed his eyes for a few seconds. Then he looked out into the darkness and turned in a slow circle.
There—behind him and to his right. He’d gone right past the flare without noticing. He found the arrow he’d drawn in the sand and reoriented himself. It was scary how easy it was to lose your sense of direction in the darkness.
That’s why you have the flares, he told himself. Now keep going. Lilith is still out here somewhere.
He walked in a wider arc toward the next row of markers and found the flare a little to the left of where he’d expected it. He adjusted again, and found the third and fourth arms of the cross.
Now he was back where he’d started. One of his three circles was complete, and he hadn’t gotten lost. Of course, he hadn’t seen any sign of Lilith, either, which meant that she was farther out from the station. He tried not to think about the possibility that she was so far away that his flares wouldn’t even reach her.
The second and third rings were more difficult than the first. The distances between the sets of flares were longer, and it was harder to follow the right arc. He passed by each of the flares without seeing it and had to double back. On one segment, he had to backtrack three times before he finally found the marker.
He moved out to the last ring. The flares were starting to burn down. How long would they last? He walked quickly. This time, there were over three hundred steps between each flare. He missed the first and second flares by wide margins and had to spend precious time searching, tracing ever-widening circles until he found them.
Michael was so focused on keeping himself from getting lost that he almost missed Lilith.
20
WHEN MICHAEL SAW a yellow gleam in the darkness to his right, about a hundred steps outside the outermost circle, he was so intent on finding the next flare that he ignored it for a moment. After a few seconds, something clicked in his brain and he realized what he’d seen.
“Lilith!” he shouted, running through the swirling brown fog. She was still slumped over on the stretcher with her eyes closed. A fine layer of red dust covered her suit. He was lucky to have found her—five meters farther away, and he would never have seen the light from her headlamp. He grabbed her wrist screen and checked her vital signs. She was alive, but her breathing and heart rate had slowed even further.
He’d done it. He’d found her. Now all he had to do was get her back to the pumping station, and then . . . what? He pushed that thought away. He’d figure it out when they got there.
“Come on,” Michael said. He picked up the ropes and wrapped them around his chest. Which way? He tried to reconstruct it all in his mind—the flares, the station, the place where he’d found Lilith. That way, he decided, focusing his eyes on a particular spot in the darkness ahead. The station should be no more than two hundred steps away, and with any luck he’d see one of his flares and it would guide him back.
Pulling Lilith was harder than he’d remembered. The replacement filter he’d installed was getting saturated, and his head throbbed painfully. He suddenly realized that he’d left the last spare filter back at the station. If he couldn’t find his way back soon, that mistake was going to kill him.
After a dozen meters, he was already panting for air. Lilith’s stretcher felt like an anchor digging into the ground. Fifty steps, then a hundred, but there was no sign of the station or any of the flares. When he got to two hundred steps, he turned off his lamp and closed his eyes for a minute and then scanned the darkness. Nothing. Not a speck of light anywhere.
When he’d gone three hundred steps, he stopped. Somehow he’d missed the station. His chest tightened with panic. It’s okay, he told himself. He just had to pick another angle and try again, and he was bound to find the station eventually.
Eventually. He didn’t have time for eventually. The pain in his head was making it difficult to concentrate. His mind drifted off into a hazy, cold emptiness. At some point he tripped and fell. He stayed on his hands and knees for a moment, staring at the ground, trying to remember what he’d been doing. His mind snapped awake, and he looked back the way he’d come. How far since he’d turned around? Two hundred steps? Three hundred? He couldn’t remember.
He was lost. All of that preparation, and it hadn’t helped at all. He was lost and had no idea how to get back.
Michael took a deep breath. One more time. He’d turn back one more time, and then he was done. He pushed himself to his feet and turned Lilith around. He had no idea where the station was, but it didn’t really matter. Pick a direction and go. Keep going until you can’t anymore.
When he’d gone another hundred steps, he saw something on the ground ahead of him. A white line of dust, like chalk. He squinted at it. After a moment he realized that it was the burned-out husk of a flare. Only the tiniest spark remained at one end.
Now what? he thought dully. He found the arrow he’d drawn in the dirt and followed it with his eyes. The station. The station was that way.
He set off again. He tried to count his steps, but his head hurt too much. It was all he could do to keep going in a straight line. After what seemed like an eternity, he saw the yellow glow of the station’s lights.
“We’re there, Lil,” he panted. For a moment he thought that this was part of Milankovic, somewhere with people, somewhere they would be safe. Then he remembered. This was just a remote pumping station outside the main colony. They weren’t safe at all.
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He pulled her through the door, squinting in the fluorescent light. He let the ropes drop and grabbed the emergency kit. One more air filter. He pulled out the old one and slid the replacement into its place.
He looked at his wrist screen. How long had the previous filter lasted? An hour? Maybe less? The crack in his air unit must be getting worse. He didn’t have much time left.
Michael’s eyes fell on the pipe that led from the pump machinery and out through the wall. That pipe went to Milankovic. All he needed was a way to follow it. He stood up. His skull still pulsed with pain, but the oxygen from the new filter was already helping his mind to clear. He needed to take advantage of that clarity now, because it wasn’t going to last long.
He went outside and around to where the pipe left the building. It ran along the ground for a few meters and then dipped below the surface. If he could follow the pipe, he could reach the colony. But he’d already seen how difficult it was to keep to a straight line for more than a few minutes in this empty darkness.
He traced the pipe with his fingers. It felt like solid steel. How deep was it buried? Was there was a way to follow it even if he couldn’t see it?
Michael ran back inside and found the plastic cart he’d knocked over earlier. He grabbed a spool of insulated electrical wire and cut off a piece about a meter long. He searched the ground around the cart. He knew he’d seen it—a metal cylinder like a squat tube of toothpaste. . . .
There, stuck to the pump casing. He pried the magnet off and attached it to the wire with some electrical tape. He ran back outside and dangled it over the ground. When the magnet passed over the buried pipe, the wire jerked taut, like an invisible dog pulling at a leash. With a little experimentation, he found that if he held the magnet at the right height, he could use it to follow the path of the pipe.
Now he knew how to find the colony. All that was left was to get there. He ran back to Lilith. “Okay. This is it. The last little bit, and then we’re finished.”
He held her hand tightly for a few moments, hoping maybe her eyes would open, but she remained motionless. He stood up and wrapped the ropes of the harness around his chest and pulled her out to where the pipe disappeared into the ground. He walked quickly, holding the wire with the magnet out in front of him. Time was the most important thing, now. In a little while the last air filter would be saturated and the carbon dioxide would build up in his body again. He had to get as far as he could before . . .
Before what?
Before he started seeing more ghosts. Before he collapsed. Before he died.
Michael’s vision faded until the only thing he saw was the ground right in front of him. He felt like he was on an enormous treadmill, walking through the same landscape over and over again. Twice he wandered too far from the pipe and had to spend a panicked minute searching for it. If he hadn’t had the magnet to guide him, he would have been wandering in circles.
Or maybe he was wandering in circles anyway.
After half an hour, he stopped to drink some water and suck down some energy gel. He took a few deep breaths and looked back at Lilith, and then he started walking again. How much farther? Five kilometers? Ten? It didn’t really matter. He wasn’t going to make it. Everything had gotten so simple. He just needed to walk until he couldn’t walk any farther. One step, and then another, and then another. At some point there would be no more steps to take, and he would be done.
The headache came back first, and then the shortness of breath. His last air filter was finally saturated. Without any warning, his stomach clenched and he threw up. Vomit dribbled down the inside of his suit and onto his chest. He swished some water around in his mouth and kept going. After that he lost track of how many times he stopped to rest. Everything blended together. He had always been out here, and he always would be. His suit blared various warnings at him until he finally tore off his wrist screen and left it on the ground.
The sky had started to brighten when he finally stumbled and fell. He tried a few times to push himself to his feet, but he didn’t have the strength. This was it. This was as far as he could go.
He lay on his back, looking up at the sky. The sun was going to come up soon. At least they weren’t going to die in total darkness. And really, this wasn’t such a bad spot. It was sandy and comfortable. A warm, tingly numbness spread through his arms and legs. These suits were the best coffins ever made—wasn’t that what Randall had said? It had scared him then, but now it seemed reassuring.
He reached out and rested his hand on Lilith’s helmet. She was still breathing. She was still alive. He’d done what he’d set out to do. The rest didn’t really matter anymore.
The sun slowly climbed over the horizon. The dust around them glowed a warm, peaceful red. Shapes flickered at the edge of his vision like candle flames. They marched toward him and back away in slow cycles, each time creeping a little bit nearer. It felt odd not to have to worry about what would happen when they finally reached him.
One of the shapes separated itself from the rest. It began shouting and running toward him. He tried to tell them that they had won, that Mars had beaten him. It was okay. The shapes surrounded him, and he felt himself being lifted up and cradled like a child. Michael, a voice said, warm and gentle and familiar: Michael, Michael, Michael. A man’s face pressed up against his until it was separated only by the thin plastic of their helmets.
“Hi, Dad,” Michael murmured, and then closed his eyes.
21
THE EARLY-MORNING LIGHT filtering into the lobby of the medical center shimmered on the polished granite floor. Michael sat on a bench with his arms wrapped around his knees and stared through the glass doors at the plaza outside. A woman setting out flowers in the gift shop gave him a warm smile. She’d seen him here so often over the last few weeks that she probably wondered if he had an actual home.
“Is your friend leaving today?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” Michael said. “At least, that’s what they told me.”
The woman walked over and set down a small flowerpot with a single white orchid on the bench next to him. “For her.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Michael said, trying to hand the orchid back to her.
“Please, take it.”
Michael followed her back toward the shop, holding the flowerpot out in front of him. “No, I can’t, really. And anyway I don’t know if she even likes—”
He stopped midsentence and turned around as the doors to the elevator slid open and an attendant pushed Lilith in a wheelchair out into the lobby, followed by Lilith’s mother.
“It wasn’t my legs that were hurt, it was my head,” Lilith was saying. “I’m telling you, I don’t have any problems walking.”
“And miss, I’m telling you that it’s our policy,” the attendant said.
“Dumb policy. Waste of time.”
“In this case, I completely agree.” The attendant tapped something into her screen.
“Lilith, give the woman a break,” her mother said in a tired voice. “Look, you have a welcoming party. Hello, Michael.”
“Hello, Ms. Colson.”
“Is that for me?” Lilith asked, eyeing the flower with an amused expression.
Michael looked down at the flowerpot in his hands. Blood rushed to his cheeks as he tried to stammer a reply. He turned to hand it back to the woman, but she had already disappeared back into her shop.
“Of course it’s for you,” her mother said, taking the flower from Michael and handing it to Lilith. “It’s very pretty.”
“Thank you,” Lilith said. Her eyes glinted at Michael’s obvious discomfort. “That was very . . . thoughtful.”
“Well, I’ll give you two a minute,” her mom said. She gave Michael a kiss on the cheek, which made his blush deepen. “We’ll be waiting outside.”
“Can I please stand up now?” Lilith asked the attendant as her mother walked out through the doors of the medical center.
The attendant he
lped her out of the wheelchair. “Please be careful. We wouldn’t want you to have to come back for another stay anytime soon.”
Lilith yawned and stretched her neck and shoulders. She held the orchid up to the light. “Did you really get this for me?”
“Well—no, not exactly,” Michael said.
“Good,” she said. “I was starting to get worried.”
There was an awkward silence. He put his hands into his pockets and pulled them back out again. Hypothesis: sometimes telling the truth is much, much harder than lying.
“There’s something I want to tell you,” he said. “A few things, actually. But don’t say anything until I’m done, okay? Because I had to practice this and I don’t want to mess it up.”
“Okay,” Lilith said, a little uncertainly.
“First, that I think you’re right, and I wouldn’t know a girlfriend if one punched me in the face.”
“Exactly!” she blurted out, and then put her hand over her mouth. “Sorry. Keep going.”
“Second, that I don’t know anyone that I like anywhere near as much as you. You’re pretty incredible.”
At the word “incredible,” Lilith raised her eyebrow, but kept quiet. He took a deep breath and went on.
“Third, that waiting for you to come out of surgery was ten times harder than anything I’d ever done. And that it seems like anytime you’re someplace, that’s where I want to be, and that whenever you’re not someplace where I am, I want you to stop not being there. . . .”
Michael trailed off. His heart was beating so quickly, he could have been in the middle of a panic attack. “Okay, so I guess that was either four or five things, depending on how you want to count.”
Lilith stared at him with wide-eyed astonishment. For a long moment, she seemed speechless. “I hope you don’t think you can tell someone all of that and expect them to be able to answer.”
“I guess I just wanted to tell you,” he mumbled. “You don’t really need to say anything.”
In the Red Page 17