Edward Dayo relaxed back onto the scaffold. His eyes glazed over and his head drooped. Saliva trickled down his chin. His limbs convulsed. The deck lights faded and a humming noise filled the room. It grew louder and louder till Zeke feared his eardrums would burst—
—and the spaceship fell horribly silent. Cold, the dead empty cold of space, washed through Zeke’s bones. In the pitch dark he felt his body twist and bend and stretch like rubber. Then there was no flight deck, no ship, nothing. Zeke was alone among stars.
Chapter Five
High Mars Orbit
The lights were back on. Zeke looked around the flight deck. Some of the group were sobbing, others were giggling hysterically. Pin-mei groaned as she woke up from a faint. Edward Dayo, still wired to the motherboard, was laughing with a couple of the more robust students.
“Did you see stars?” Zeke asked Scuff who was sitting white-knuckled and rigid.
“They were stars? Thank God!”
“What?”
“I thought those were my brain cells exploding.”
Zeke was itching for his first glimpse of Mars. Unfortunately it turned out to be a very unpleasant experience. Dayo freed himself and engaged a lever. The Mariner’s Wheel glided up to the ceiling. This revealed a hidden chamber beneath the flightdeck.
“Into the sycamores. In pairs. You two first.” Dayo pointed at Zeke and Scuff. A howl of protest pierced the air.
“Fatty and blue boy? Not fair,” Jasper Snod protested with a jealous sneer.
Confused, Zeke shadowed Scuff up to the brink of the opening. Edward gestured to them to climb in and Zeke entered a tiny spherical compartment. A see-through bottom revealed the steel of the Go-Ship’s hull. Padded bars pinned them to foam chairs.
“Earthworms, catch.” Dayo grinned and threw them two tubs of triple strength sun block. “The Martian sunshine might be cool, but that solar radiation can still fry you. Oh, and you’ll need these paper bags.”
He closed the lid and was gone.
“You do know about this bit?” Scuff whispered, the colour draining from his face.
“No? What do you mean?”
A sudden jolt took their breath away. The sycamore slid along a few feet.
“Oh? This thing is suspended?” Zeke remarked. The vehicle reminded him of a cable car. Then came sounds of banging metal. Two more students were clambering into a second sycamore.
“Are we going on a tour?” Zeke asked innocently.
“W-We can’t translocate onto the s-surface,” Scuff stammered.
“Yes, I know that. Gravity’s too powerful. We’d materialise in the wrong place.”
“The one time they tried the ship arrived two miles below the surface. Instant death. Your molecules squashed in with rock molecules.”
Another sharp movement yanked them further away from the flight deck. A third sycamore had slotted into place and a third couple were boarding.
“So does this take us to the Martian Televator?” Zeke continued.
“Bro! There is no Martian Televator. Budget cuts!”
“Then how will—”
The bubble lurched forward again. This time the see-through bottom slid over an opening in the hull.
“OH!” Zeke cried. They were dangling high above the cratered surface of Mars. He gripped the padded bars, as though at any second he might be sucked out into the deadly vacuum.
“We’re about ninety miles up,” Scuff squeaked.
With nothing but the Martian atmosphere between them and the far below landscape, Zeke’s brain swam in its own juices. His stomach heaved viciously. Oh, that’s what the bags were for! As the bag filled up with Zeke’s breakfast he heard a sickening ping. The sycamore dropped.
~~~
“Something’s wrong,” Zeke shouted. The sycamore was shaking like a roller coaster in an earthquake. Beneath them the mass of red splotches were growing bigger. The violent shuddering made speaking difficult.
“No…we’re…fine,” Scuff gasped through gritted teeth, eyes tightly shut.
“No…we’re not,” Zeke persisted. A tiny voice deep in his head was screaming. He looked at the digital dashboard in front of them. “We entered…atmosphere…three minutes ago.”
“Yup…wings…release…soon.”
The vehicle’s design was based on the sycamore seed with two great spinning wings. These created air resistance, slowing the craft enough to launch the parachute. Any faster and the chute would rip.
As if in answer to Scuff’s assurance an alarm buzzed. A message flashed on the dashboard. ‘Malfunction: wings jammed.’
“WE’RE DONE FOR!” Scuff shrieked.
Zeke glanced down. The splotches were forming into canyon walls, dust plains and volcanoes. The voice inside him yelled louder. THINK!!!
“Scuff…use your...psychokinesis…free the wings!”
“I…can’t!”
“YOU MUST!”
Zeke reached out to his friend. The small gesture required superhuman effort. The increasing g-force was crushing them. Zeke squeezed Scuff’s arm. The geek gulped and closed his eyes. But he couldn’t concentrate, not now. Nothing happened.
“I CAN’T….SORRY…JUST CAN’T.”
“COME ON…YOU CAN DO IT.”
“CAN’T…YOU TRY.”
The sycamore was growing hot. Unbearably hot. The craggy terrain was hurtling upwards.
“ZEKE, PLEASE…YOU DO IT”
“CAN’T!”
“YOU CAN!” Scuff implored him.
Zeke felt angry, terrified, sick and desperate. Without warning his feelings erupted.
“CAN’T…NOT…PSYCHIC!”
Bewilderment broke across Scuff’s face.
“CHEATED...TO GET TO SCHOOL.” Zeke spat the words out.
Scuff hissed an ugly name. Zeke cringed but he knew this was no time for excuses.
“YOU MUST...DO IT,” he cried.
Scuff tried again. Zeke closed his eyes too. It might help, he thought frantically. Zeke pictured the wings on top of the Sycamore, jammed in their casings. He could see them, coiled up and waiting for their covers to blow. Zeke imagined a sycamore seed, wafting safely down from its tree. He focused hard on that image. With every fibre of his being he wished for the wings to unfurl.
A new message beeped, ‘Wings operational’.
“I did it!” Scuff yelped with elation.
Yet the voice inside Zeke’s head said Scuff had nothing to do with it.
The sycamore’s speed eased. With a sudden tug the parachute released into the pale Martian sky. Their descent slowed further. Underneath their feet the crimson canyons flowered into spurs and crests.
Scuff recovered his composure.
“Bro, you are done for!” he snarled. “The minute we get out of this tin can you’ll be going back to Earth in chains.”
Exhausted, reeking of vomit and ready to cry, Zeke landed on Mars.
Chapter Six
Mariners Valley
“STOP!”
Zeke had his hand on the hatch wheel.
“Are you a moron as well as a liar?” Scuff bellowed.
The words stung.
“We’ve got to check we’re in the right place,” Scuff continued, poking at the sat-nav controls.
“The Valley is the biggest canyon in the Solar System, how could we miss?”
“I heard a sycamore went off course once and landed up on top. The idiot newbies opened the airlock. They were found clinging to the hull like a couple of Martian Popsicles.”
Zeke shivered at the thought.
“Why don’t the governments make Mars safe all over?”
“It’s to do with the money.”
Zeke gazed at him blankly.
“Don’t they read in England? Haven’t you heard about all the arguments at the UN, who’s going to foot the bill etcetera. Terra-forming is way behind schedule.”
“But there’s enough oxygen, right?”
“Sure, thanks to greenhouse gases and gene
tically modified bacteria. Oxygen levels are climbing. Two hundred years ago the air was so thin blood boiled in your veins. But Mars is far from Earth-like. Topside it’s about as cosy as the summit of Mount Everest.”
“So it’s a good thing we’re down in the Valley?”
Mariners Valley broke across the equator like a festering wound. As large as the U.S.A. it sank five miles below Martian sea level, not that there were any actual seas on Mars of course. At the bottom the air was thick enough for a comfortable existence. Zeke struggled to get his head around the science.
“So why doesn’t the air leak out of the Valley, up into the lower pressure?”
Scuff threw him a withering glance. “Why doesn’t Earth’s atmosphere leak out into Space? Little thing called gravity.” He finished examining the controls. “Wow, bang square in Ophir Chasma.”
“What do all these names mean, anyway?”
“Chasma is Latin for canyon, bozo. Mariners Valley is made up of a whole bunch of them. Go on then, open up.”
Zeke took a deep breath and opened the hatch.
Lower pressure sucked the stale air out with a whistle. A cold gritty dryness filled the sycamore. Mars lacked Earth’s flora and humidity. Instead basalt and iron oxide dominated the environment. The Martian morning smelt like a cocktail of molten lead and dry ice.
Neither boy could wait to walk on Martian soil. With gravity one third of Earth’s they both bounded effortlessly for the exit. But the opening wasn’t wide enough for two and they jammed halfway out.
“Man, what a sight!” Scuff sighed in awe.
Zeke was dumbstruck, and for a moment forgot his ‘new friend’ was going to have him sent home.
The sun, rising in a tawny sky, lit up a jagged landscape. Canyon walls loomed high above them like an end-of-the-world tsunami. Across the valley spires of rock towered out from the gloom. Centuries of wind had gnawed them into strange precarious shapes. They resembled colossal petrified monsters, all claws, bones and teeth.
“It’s so quiet!” Zeke whispered.
“You said it, bro! That’s the absence of life and water.”
“You could hear a pin drop twenty miles away!”
“I’m so damn lucky,” Scuff said to himself. “I’m going to the best ever school and graduate an intergalactic hero! Sure beats a small town high school.”
“Don’t rub it in. We can’t all be special,” Zeke said, his lips in a grimace. Both boys clambered down from the sycamore.
A shadow fell across them. Another sycamore was idly desc-ending. With a soft thud and cloud of ochre sand it landed nearby.
“Well, they can be the first to know,” Zeke added bitterly.
Scuff looked at the ground, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Why did you do it, Zeke?”
“My dad’s a Star Mariner. He left before I was born.”
“That’s what this is about? You miss your daddy?”
Zeke subdued an urge to punch his friend’s froggy nose. That wouldn’t solve anything!
“Bro! You can have mine gift-wrapped with ribbons. I can’t believe you’d go through all this for your old man.”
“Mum’s told me so many stories about him. He was the funniest, bravest, kindest man she ever met. I just want to meet him.”
“But how did you fool the examiners?”
“I sat next to a boy called Felix Dyer. He already knew he was psychic. He had absolutely no desire to go to Mars. We swapped answers without the teachers realising. Easy-peasy.”
“And you thought you’d bluff your way through psych school?”
“Well, yes.”
“Are you nuts?”
“Once I began it was kind of difficult to stop. I became a celebrity, interviews with the local webcasts, holomags, the whole circus. Mum started getting sponsorship deals. Without my father we’ve been pretty hard up. The money was great. I just went with the flow.”
“Don’t you think the teachers will notice?”
“Well, if you’re so clever, psychic boy, tell me what we’re not supposed to do?”
Scuff scratched his head for a moment, and then a light dawned on his face.
“We’re not allowed to use our powers, not till we’ve passed the end of term exam.”
Zeke nodded and added, “it would be too dangerous.”
“But your dad isn’t on the Big Pumpkin, is he? Why didn’t you stow away on a colony ship?”
“Because we don’t know where he went. His destination was top secret. But Mum thought people at the school might remember. Some of his classmates are now teachers. And all the Mariner records are all here.”
“Gee, sounds like a plan.”
“Right, a plan for disaster,” Zeke replied, kicking a pebble.
Scuff threw him an odd expression.
“And you’re sure you’re not psychic?”
“I think I’d know. Don’t you?”
“It’s just—”
“Just what?”
A noise interrupted the conversation, like blades swishing through air. Although far away, in the crystal clear atmosphere it echoed around them.
“It’s the school bus, picking us up,” Scuff explained. He took a deep breath. “Sheesh! Two minutes on Mars and already life’s complicated. Okay, Zeke, I’m on a whole new planet and you’re my only bud. I really think you ought to ’fess up before you get into this any deeper, but they ain’t going to hear it from me.”
“You’ll keep it secret?”
“Yes, your lordship,” he replied in a ridiculous British accent.
Zeke’s crooked grin broke across his face. But the grin faded as he realised Scuff was staring, wide-eyed, over his shoulder.
Scuff let out a scream.
“A giant bug, RUN!”
Zeek pivoted on one foot and saw something impossible. A huge metallic Millipede was crawling across distant boulders. Countless legs clicked up and down as it slivered over the landscape. Zeke’s blood turned to ice.
He glanced back at Scuff who was doubled up with laughter.
“The expression on your face, bro! Priceless!”
He looked again. The segmented creature was actually a vehicle.
Scuff made a tremendous effort to stop cackling.
“The school bus, bro. Hover cars don’t work on a planet with no magnetism. Legs work better than wheels on this bumpy low-grav terrain. OUCH!”
A handful of gravel battered Scuff’s chest. Zeke dusted his palms and waved at the Millipede.
“Over here! Before a certain boy genius drives me insane.”
~~~
The skies burned lava red. Firestones rained down upon a scene of hellish destruction. Zeke stood rooted, unable to move. It was coming. The great inhuman face was coming, a gargantuan face on many legs, crushing mountains underfoot. Terror as sharp as a knife twisted in Zeke’s heart. The hideous face saw him. And it spoke! One word, ancient, alien and incomprehensible. But Zeke understood this word. ‘Spiral’.
Zeke woke with a yell. He was at the back of the Millipede.
“Bad dream?” Pin-mei asked.
He sat up, confused and feverish. The Martian night had fallen and a land of shadows lay outside. Phobos, the tiny eye-shaped moon, shone feebly overhead. The constellations sparkled through unpolluted air like jewels. Zeke traced some of his favourites, Orion, Cassiopeia, and Pegasus. He marvelled how their patterns were unchanged. Even though he had travelled over fifty-five million miles their positions remained constant. The vastness of the universe was beyond imagination. For an instant he felt dizzy, as if he might fall off this tiny planet into the endless pit of space.
“Bro, the stars here are just the same as back in Britsville.”
It was Scuff, munching on a bar of Martian chocolate. Zeke gave him a ferocious stare. Was the geek reading his thoughts again?
The Millipede, piloted by two school Mariners, had spent a long, tiring day trawling the lowlands. One by one the sycamores were located and their occupants re
scued. Some had landed in better condition than others. Snod had sustained a black eye and was in a foul mood. One girl was found wandering aimlessly and singing to herself. Pin-mei, on the other hand, was gleefully munching her mother’s homemade rice-cakes.
“That’s fun. Can we do it again?” she giggled.
Each student was welcomed heartily by the teachers and treated to steaming soup and heaps of Martian chocolate. Despite the bitter taste Scuff gobbled down fifteen cherry-coloured bars before Zeke nodded off.
“We’re there!” Pin-mei squeaked.
She pointed through the windscreen. For the first time in his life Zeke beheld the Chasm.
A thousand lit windows flickered against the lifeless alien night. They illuminated a fortress of gloomy towers. Originally tunnelled out of natural catacombs, the School had expanded over time. New wings had crept outwards and upwards; parapets, turrets and arches. The structure brooded against the cliff like a giant coral.
“Gosh!” was all he could say, mouth agape.
The Millipede was nearing the great stone entrance. Three words were engraved into the slab, thought, magnetism, gravity.
“Of these three thought is the most powerful,” the students all chanted, even Scuff and Pin. Twenty pairs of eyes lit up with psychic energy, glowing like diamonds in the dark. A rush of coldness tugged at Zeke’s lungs. He was alone, on another planet, and among freaks.
Chapter Seven
The Ophir Chasma School for Psychic Endeavour
With a hiss the Millipede slowed to a standstill. The students wearily staggered out into a school courtyard. Clumsy, mud-coloured buildings rose up on all sides. Zeke imagined a city of monstrous termite mounds and shivered. Whether from shock or the bitter Martian night he couldn’t tell.
“You’re looking seriously freaked out,” Scuff said in a shaky voice.
“I am. Stop reading my mind.”
“I told you already, bro. I’m no telepathist.”
Zeke shrugged and glanced around at his peers. They were looking red-eyed and emotional, as the reality of an alien planet sunk in. They might never see their families again. A tall, olive-skinned girl was crying softly, with a crumpled letter in her hand. Even the revolting Jasper Snod was silent, his eyes fixed on his feet. Zeke thought of his own mother far across the gulf of space. What was she doing now, he wondered? An image of their tearful farewell at the airport flashed into his mind. It was too painful. Instead he focused on his father, up there somewhere, lost among the stars. He had to find him! He would find him!
The Infinity Trap Page 3