Sand and Shadow

by Laurisa White Reyes

  “Hurry!”

  Jonah grasped his cross and closed his eyes in a brief prayer. “Our Father who art in heaven,” he whispered, then snatched a set of gear from the disarray on the floor and quickly pulled it on. Then with only a moment’s hesitation, he leapt out of the hatch into the sand, taking off at a run the moment his feet touched ground.

  Dema and Adán slipped into their gear as well. “I’m going for the embryos,” said Adán.

  “And the remote transmitter,” said Dema. “We need it to communicate with the Ensign. Without it, we’re as good as dead.”

  “Okay. We’ll get the embryos first, and then I’ll get the transmitter.”

  Together they entered the lab. Dema paused, a muffled cry sounding in her throat.

  “Are you okay?” asked Adán.

  Dema nodded. “If only I’d known—He or she is in here.” She looked at him, a fierceness in her eyes.

  “We’ll save as many as we can,” Adán said. “I promise.”

  Dema and Adán each carefully removed two cases of human embryos and tucked one under each arm.

  They turned to leave, but Dema hesitated, looking back at the wall of drawers with regret. “We’re not leaving any behind,” she said with a hitch in her voice.

  Adán said nothing. What could he say? Instead, he quickly coaxed her forward. They returned to the outer hatch. Dema went out first, and Adán handed the cases down to her. She took two with her, leaving the other two behind while she ran for the second rover.

  Adán could already hear the purr of the first rover’s engine, Jonah coming close. Once he heard the second motor turn over, he returned to the lab for more embryos, but time was running short.

  After carefully dropping four more cases into the sand, he headed for the cockpit. He started to remove the transmitter from its casing, but then paused. What if they didn’t get away? What if. . .?

  He powered up the transmitter and sent out a hail.

  “This is Carpathia hailing the Ensign. This is a message of distress. Carpathia unable to fly. Most of the crew is dead. Survivors coming to you by rover. I know that it might not be possible, but please find a way to send someone to meet us. Over.”

  He set the hail on continuous, then jerked the transmitter free and made for the hatch.

  Dema was there waiting for him, the remaining embryo cases already secured onto her rover. He had just tossed the transmitter to her when the shuttle jerked violently, throwing Adán against the wall.

  “Adán!” The sound of Dema shouting his name was quickly swallowed up in the cacophony of the shuttle’s sudden violent shift.

  It was moving again.

  The shuttle rolled, its remaining port wing cracking off with a percussive boom! Adán could not prevent himself from being jostled freely inside like a snow globe’s inhabitant. Every collision against a wall or cabinet sent new spikes of pain through his body. He wrapped his arms protectively around his head. Finally, the rolling stopped, and the shuttle righted itself, but he could still feel the momentum of the shuttle being pushed across the sand.

  He looked out the open hatch which now faced the opposite way it had before. Through it he could see the black, snake-like canyon coming ever closer. He had to get out somehow, but if he jumped from the hatch now, he would be instantly crushed by the shuttle itself.

  With no time to think, he flung open a cabinet and grabbed a wrench, the same one, he realized, that Dema had used to knock out Scott. Then he ran into the cockpit and began hammering the eighteen-inch steel tool against the windshield. He rammed it against the glass over and over until finally the window shattered, though the fragments held together like a puzzle, bound between layers of safety material. Two more hits, and the glass finally gave way. Climbing up on the console, Adán assessed the distance to the ground. With the front wheel broken off, it wasn’t as far as it had once been. He grasped the edges of the frame with his hands and pushed off.

  The sand was soft when he landed, but his injuries made him grunt in pain. The shuttle continued to speed away from him, propelled by some unseen force. Adán quickly scanned the horizon, spotting the two rovers not far off. He scrambled to his feet and ran.

  Within seconds, the familiar signs of a storm sprang up around him: pitching wind and swirling gusts of sand. In his haste to vacate the shuttle, he had forgotten to attach his comm, so he could not communicate with Dema or Jonah. Would they reach him in time, before the monster tore him to pieces? Or worse, would it kill all of them?

  He held his arm up in a futile attempt to block the sand blasting against his visor. He peered underneath it and saw the outline of one of the rovers approaching.

  “Get on!” shouted Jonah, his voice barely audible above the tumult of the storm.

  Adán clambered aboard. The rover lurched forward, speeding to rejoin Dema in the distance, but they were not alone. As the storm cycloned around them, they were lifted airborne on a powerful gust of wind and then slammed back down again. And then Adán saw what he had feared most—a massive swell rising from the ground, moving across the sand with the speed and power of a locomotive. They were not going to make it. They would never make it. The monster wanted them dead, and it would have them.

  As the swell of sand approached, Adan knew there was no escape. At least not for all of them.

  Adán leapt off the rover.

  “What are you doing?” screamed Jonah, but Adán didn’t have time to answer. He sprinted back toward the shuttle, shouting at the tops of his lungs.

  “Come get me, you bastard! If you’re going to kill us all, you might as well start with me!”

  He glanced over his shoulder to see the dazed expression on Jonah’s face through his visor. Beyond that he saw the massive dune shift its course. He kept screaming until he reached the shuttle, forsaken by the monster when it went after the rovers. Adán climbed aboard through the hatch, then turned to look out again.

  It was as if the shuttle sensed his presence, felt his touch. The moment he stepped aboard, the wave of sand ceased its pursuit and sunk back into the ground like a wave swallowed in its own ocean. The wind slowed as well, and Adán could just make out Dema and Jonah in the distance. They would be safe now, he hoped.

  Adán tried to brace himself just as the invisible force slammed into the shuttle’s side, but it was no use. Adán was flung inside, his shoulder smashing against the counter. Then the shuttle was moving again, faster than before, but nose first this time. Through the shattered windshield, he saw the canyon approaching and guessed that in just two or three minutes the shuttle would topple into it.

  Adán struggled to hold onto whatever he could to get to the lab, but the gloves of his suit made it difficult, so he tore off the gloves and moved on. Once inside, he braced his feet against the wall and reached for two more cases, his fingers gripping their rigid plastic handles. Then he stopped. Scott’s final words hit him like a bullet.

  “We’re nothing. They’re all that matters.”

  But he was wrong. Dema was wrong. Adán thought of the nearly eight billion people who had died on Earth. He thought of Carpathia’s crew, of Tink and Lainie and the others.

  “We all matter,” he said out loud, the idea filling him like a revelation. “Every life is worth living, worth saving. Not just the human race as a whole, but each distinct individual.”

  He pulled the cases free from the storage compartment.

  “I’ll do my best for you guys,” he said, “but I want to survive too.”

  Then Adán headed back toward the hatch, fighting awkwardly to stay upright. The world zoomed by through the open hatch, the shuttle slicing through the sand like a fin through water. Chances were that these embryos he carried would not survive the fall they were about to experience, and if they did, they might not survive the trip to New Earth. The life-sustaining energy packs on them might die long before they even reached the rendezvous. Yet maybe, just maybe some of them might live. If even one made it, it would all be worth it.<
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  Adán scrambled and slipped across the floor to the hatch and flung the cases out into the sand. In a fraction of a second, they were gone from view. Then he hurried back for more. He had managed to fling out the last of the human cases when he felt the weight of the shuttle tilt forward.

  They had reached the canyon, and the Carpathia was teetering at its edge. The truth was, Adán wanted to live. He would take one desperate leap from the hatch, but if he leapt too soon, the monster might release its grip on the shuttle and turn its attention on him, or on Dema and Jonah. As long as the shuttle remained intact, there would be no end to the monster, or to the consciences that controlled it. If he waited too long, he would go down with it, but he’d already decided that was a risk he was willing to take.

  The shuttle tilted more steeply, and Adán felt a strange sort of weightlessness as the floor fell away from beneath him. He glimpsed the canyon ridge as it slid past the hatch.

  Adán propelled himself forward—and leapt.

  Adán collided with the canyon rim, his chin smashing into a surprisingly jagged rock. Despite the searing pain, his fingers clawed at the stone, desperate for purchase. He dug the toes of his boots into the cliff face but found no foothold wide enough to stop his descent. He slid several inches down the rock wall until finally, his hand caught hold of a triangular shard of stone jutting out from the wall.

  Below him, the Carpathia dropped into the dark, seemingly endless recesses of the planet’s gut. It was strange that something that had seemed so alive could die without a sound.

  Adán pressed his boots into the rock. Bits of soil broke free, toppling into the grotto. He cautiously tested the wall until he found a grip for his free hand and took hold. Then he released his other hand and did the same, slowly inching his way up toward the crest.

  He had climbed to within a foot of the top when he felt something clamp around his ankle. It felt as solid and heavy as an iron manacle, but when he looked down, he saw nothing. It pulled at him, and he clung to the stone by his bare fingertips which were quickly growing numb from the cold air.

  When his left hand slipped, he lost his footing on the narrow ridge below him. He screamed out, swinging freely from one hand. Adán tried to shake the monster loose, but it would not release him. He wondered how far the shuttle would have to fall to hit bottom, and would the monster really die once it did?

  His fingers slipped, and he strained from the effort of holding on while his other hand desperately searched for a new handhold.

  And then she was there. Above him. Reaching down.

  “Hold on!” Dema shouted, stretching out her hand to him. He tried to reach her, tried to take her hand, but the force that pulled him would not allow him that extra inch.

  “I can’t!” he called up to her. “It’s got me! It’s pulling me down!”

  “No, Adán! Don’t let go!”

  Dema’s face disappeared, and Adán feared he would never see it again, but she returned a moment later, stabbing the long crescent wrench at him. The wrench. He had carried it with him when he’d leapt through the shuttle’s windshield and had dropped it somewhere in the sand. Dema must have found it.

  Adán stretched his hand and grabbed hold of it.

  “Can you hold me?” he called up.

  “Jonah’s got me!” she said. “We’ll pull you up!”

  Adán released the stone and took the wrench with both hands, but the monster still had him. He groaned in pain, feeling his body being stretched beyond reasonable limits. Would he be ripped apart like Scott had been? The pain was intense. Searing. Something popped in his lower back. He screamed, the pain shooting black daggers across his vision.

  He would have to let go. His hands were slipping anyway.

  “I can’t hold on!” he cried. “I can’t!”

  Above him Dema’s face twisted with the effort of holding him, pulling against the force of the monster.

  He would have to let go. The monster would never release him.

  Dark spots danced in front of his eyes. His head swam. He couldn’t fight it anymore. Then somewhere far below him, farther down than human eyes could ever see, there was a sound. A distant echo, a faint rumble like thunder. It drifted up to him and then was gone. And suddenly he felt light, light as air, like he was floating, drifting. And his mind went black.

  Adán awoke to a bright lilac sky and the steady thrum of a motor. He lay on a flat, hard surface that vibrated beneath him. He sat up and found himself lying on the flat bed of a rover he’d never seen before. They were traveling across the familiar Gliesen terrain, only the mountains that had always seemed so far away were now very close.

  He turned to see the backs of two people in front of him, one driving and the other in the passenger seat. The passenger turned and smiled at him.

  “So, the hero awakes,” said Jonah, grinning. The driver, an older man with a dark beard, glanced back as well.

  “Where’s Dema?” asked Adán. He felt a little dizzy, and his body ached.

  “Dema? She’s right behind you.”

  Adán turned to see Dema driving Carpathia’s main rover, with the smaller one in tow. She waved at him, and he waved back.

  Jonah pointed in front of the rover. “Hey,” he said. “You’re gonna want to see this.”

  Adán peered ahead and saw an amazing sight. Green. Everywhere was the color green. The crew of the Ensign had planted crops, and for miles in every direction there were endless rows of green.

  And tents. Adán counted dozens of tents of varying sizes. And people. Men and women, and even a handful of children.

  New Earth.

  They had found a way to reach the colony, or Commander Parks had somehow found a way to reach them.

  The rover pulled up beside a large metal dome.

  “This is our headquarters,” said the driver. “We built it from the remains of the Ensign. Commander Parks is waiting for you. We have a section in the lab set up for your cargo. Jonah here says that you rescued over five hundred embryos. That’s really something.”

  Dema pulled up beside them. She hurried over to Adán, testing his arms and legs with her hands.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. She brushed her fingers over his face, her expression full of concern. “I’ve been so worried. We weren’t sure if—”

  Adán placed a finger on her lips. “Shhh,” he told her. “I’m fine. Really.”

  She watched as a group of men unloaded Carpathia’s cargo from the rovers. Adán noticed her eyes swell with tears. She smiled. “Thank you,” she said.

  They would learn later, from Commander Parks and the archives they had recovered from the Ensign, how NASA had resorted to using a program with unpredictable outcomes to weed out the moles on the shuttles. Yet while the Ensign and some others did in fact have saboteurs on board, most had been destroyed by good intentions. The COP had, as it turned out, a collective will of its own. In its view, every crew member was guilty and deserved to be eliminated.

  But the Ensign’s crew had fought back—and survived. New Earth and its scrap of humanity flourished. It would become the home of Carpathia’s remnant crew and of all future generations. But for now, Adán had only one thought: He was alive. They were alive.

  “What do you think?” Dema asked him, glancing around the village. “It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? They have a whole team here. They’ll take care of the embryos. And I’m going to help them.”

  “I’m glad,” said Adán.

  “The human race will thrive. We’ll make sure of it.” Dema’s enthusiasm was contagious. “Every one of those lives will have a chance to grow, to exist and fill its potential.”

  Adán tried to imagine the world Dema envisioned. Like General Berkeley had said in his vid explaining what had happened, it would take generations.

  “What about in the meantime?” Adán asked cautiously. “What about us?”

  “Us?” Dema replied, though the fervor in her eyes suggested she was thinking about that as
well.

  “I mean now that we’re here,” he said, “what are we—you and I—going to do?”

  Dema narrowed her eyes thoughtfully and studied Adán’s face. Finally, her lips curved into a smile. “I guess we’ll just have to take the future one day at a time,” she said. Then she leaned close and kissed him.

  OFFICIAL DECLARATION

  Cristiano E. Barrios, President of the United States of America

  My Fellow Americans,

  By now most of you have heard the rumors that Earth will soon be facing unprecedented temperatures due to solar radiation. It is my unfortunate duty to confirm that these rumors are true.

  Mankind has always been driven toward exploration and survival. The earliest civilizations battled floods, droughts, war, and pestilence. From the Egyptian pyramids to the Phoenician seafarers, from those who travelled the Silk Road of China to the American pioneers and innovators who shaped our modern world, humans have continually sought to expand their knowledge and influence their environment.

  This innate instinct landed Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969, and revolutionized communication with the iPhone in 2007. And since then, our species has only continued to reach toward greater heights and distances, culminating in this year’s Planetary Colonization Program, which launched eleven shuttles into space with the anticipation of planting our seed on a distant land.

  In light of the news of Earth’s impending fate, I ask that instead of fear, we embrace faith. Instead of anger, we embrace appreciation. Instead of despair, we embrace hope—hope for the future of the human race which will endure and increase despite all odds, just as it has always done.

  To borrow the words of President Ronald Reagan: “Man will continue his conquest of space. To reach out for new goals and ever greater achievements—that is the way we shall commemorate those who have gone before. And to those who carry our legacy into a new realm, we bid you goodbye. Do not forget us, for we know in our hearts that you who fly so high and so proud now make your home beyond the stars, safe in God’s promise of eternal life.”