Of the four of us, Nisien had really steamed ahead with his project and it was impossible not to be impressed with what he’d achieved so far.

The technology on board the existing vehicles to clear obstructions was old-fashioned and didn’t always perform well, as we’d seen on the day we landed. The huge demands upon the small team of mechanics on board a mission meant that this was the kind of issue which never really got properly sorted. The current way to deal with obstructions on the road was to seal, freeze and shatter them and the vehicles were very good at this, but the larger remains still had to be cleared away manually which took time. Nisien’s idea was simple but effective. He’d worked out a way of flattening the seal during the freezing process and putting pressure on the midpoint, so that when the seal ruptured, the shattered remains got blasted out on either side, leaving the path in front of the craft relatively clear.

Having replaced the wires he’d disabled accidentally when Robeen had been helping him, Nisien had already modified the equipment on a decommissioned amphibical, a hulking class four brute at least thirty years old, and although it didn’t work perfectly yet – the debris often got blown back at the vehicle itself – he was getting there. When he gave us a demonstration one afternoon on the back road from the workshop to the main service road, the craft froze and dispersed a huge pile of wood that had been dragged up from the marshes. Safe in the amphibical’s cabin, we watched as the frozen fragments exploded in great arcs to either side of us, leaving the road fairly clear. It was a near perfect demonstration and we gave Nisien a round of applause. Robeen, to her own surprise and ours, planted a kiss on his cheek. Nisien was delighted and of course, we’d also filmed the momentous event to send back to school.

Our weekly broadcasts to Pioneer School were basically all about Nisien’s project. To me, the broadcasts were just a chore to be got through and since learning the truth about why I’d been chosen for the mission, I felt so thoroughly betrayed by Core Panel I couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for them. Since I couldn’t report what I’d really been up to at the Museum, it was a relief to let Nisien enjoy centre stage. Robeen explained her musical instrument discoveries and once he’d returned from Mumbai, it was impossible to shut Halley up about what he’d seen on his trip. When I absolutely had to say something, I talked about the weather, but they weren’t expecting that much of me, so what did it matter?

As I’d told Halley, with the celephet broken, I wasn’t spending time at the Museum any more, not legitimately anyway. Until it was mended, Robeen and I were back helping the archaeologists. One afternoon, Lana took Robeen to the Museum in one of the larger amphibicals and they brought a lot of the musical instruments back to Base so Robeen could carry on with her project and, best of all, practise on the real cello.

So the days went by. The new archaeological site was on the headland just below Cardiff, where caves had been carved into the sides of the cliffs. They were believed to have been hideouts in the last days. No one knew exactly how long these ‘last days’ had lasted but they’d been long enough for humans to tunnel their way right into the cliffs and establish communities. Most of the caves had collapsed long ago but it was still possible to enter one or two which had been declared safe, via the steep steps carved into the cliffsides. There were no human remains in the caves but plenty of artefacts, furniture and cooking utensils. Some of the rooms looked as though the inhabitants had left only minutes before, which was eerie.

You could imagine these caves as the perfect place to hide from giant monstrous insects: the entrances were small but once you’d made it through the first tunnel, the rooms opened out so you could stand up in them. The structures were re-enforced with metal cages so they were safe from collapse or from the gigantic, tunnelling worms. It seemed strange that humans had ended up living in dwellings like large replicas of a beetle’s burrow and when I shared the thought with Pico, he agreed with me. He told me he’d seen the drawings at the Museum and had found them terrible. When I’d first heard we were going to these caves, I’d been afraid that we might find more apocalyptic scenes on the walls, similar to those at the Museum. The drawings we actually found, and there were many, drawn with varying degrees of skill, portrayed a more idyllic world – peaceful landscapes where smiling adults and children worked and played. Perhaps the people who’d drawn them had clung to the hope that the Earth could be like that again someday.

People sometimes commented on how tired I looked, how I couldn’t stop yawning, but on the whole they were too busy to take much notice. I was tired. I was still spending hours each night writing poems with Jonah at the Museum. His vast store cupboard of knowledge about the Earth and memories of places he’d travelled to before the War was an endless source of inspiration. The poems we wrote were wonderful, if I say so myself, and of course, I’m entitled to because they weren’t mine alone. Jonah was a true poet; he could open my eyes, help me feel that I’d seen things I’d never physically seen and give me exactly the words to describe them.

My fellow poet remained hidden, a blurred shape within the crinoid circle, a warm, mellifluous voice which came and went, a humorous voice full of humanity, so real and so near, yet so far away. I felt so close to him, so happy I had someone to talk to, but I found myself shying away from some things. I didn’t understand where he was, for a start, or rather where his consciousness was stored. Somehow, he had latched on to my brain patterns, my ability to empathise and possibly my deep feelings for Earth, although in a way it was easier to believe this was some ancient magic and that the crinoid circle had charmed him back into existence. Each time we spoke, he seemed to be carrying on from where we’d left off previously, as though when I wasn’t there, he didn’t exist.

Then there was the War for Earth and the last days; I longed to know more but I was afraid that making him tell me might shunt him into remembering his own death. I would do absolutely anything to avoid causing him any more pain. In all the excitement, it was easy to forget that the brief candle flame of his consciousness wasn’t going to last forever. Doc Carter had explained it to me; a stored consciousness had a limited lifespan, if you could call it that, and one day soon Jonah would have used up his existence.

Quite unexpectedly one night, he began talking about the War without my asking him. It had been a hard day on site and I’d really been looking forward to spending time with Jonah, but he seemed unable to tune in his voice and it swooped over my head and circled in the air over and over again. I was alarmed and kept talking and encouraging him but as soon as his voice settled, I noticed how different he looked. The shapes I thought of as his head and shoulders were sort of slumped.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

‘I grow weary,’ he said. ‘I haven’t the strength for this anymore.’

‘No!’ It was too soon.

‘The last days were terrible…’ Were. He’d switched to the past tense.

‘Then don’t think of them, Jonah. There’s no need to talk about them.’

‘I must.’

A cold shiver ran through me, matching the vibrations of his laboured words. It was impossible to speak, almost impossible to breathe. At any moment Jonah would be snuffed out and I was scared of doing anything. I felt the way you’d feel holding a sick baby bird, scared of doing anything that might extinguish that faint, stilted little heartbeat.

His voice came in gasps now. ‘Outside, the land was being ripped apart by the creatures … there was no hope…’

‘Please, you don’t have to tell me.’

‘I must. Before my time … before my time is up…’

‘Go on then,’ I said feebly.

‘The last days … we were the last few … the people were dead … the last days…’ He seemed to be losing his way.

‘You were here at the Museum?’ I couldn’t think what to ask. There were so many questions I should have been asking but I couldn’t collect my thoughts. This was so sudden and frightening.

‘I have to tell … have to tell…’

‘You were under attack from those creatures?’

‘We made a pact … we all went out together…’

I was struggling to keep calm, groping for questions – it might be my last chance to ask.

‘“We”? Who were you fighting? Were the different countries battling against each other, like a world war?’

‘We all went together … we looked up in the sky and there they were…’ ‘They’ was said with such disgust.

I tried a different tack. ‘The dragomansk were in the sky? Was it your side that changed them, Jonah? Were you the ones that altered their genetic code?’

‘I don’t … mean … the dragomansk. I mean … them.They were in the sky. You remember, we were at war with … them…’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t remember. Who, Jonah, who?’

‘We were the last… We went out together … hand in hand, to show them … that they couldn’t crush us … we still wouldn’t tell them what they wanted to know … they watched us die but there was nothing they could do…’

My stomach felt as though it had dropped through a trapdoor.

‘Tell us the dragomansk’s code…’ he said, mimicking a different voice.

Please no, I thought.

‘Who were you fighting, Jonah?’

‘Tell us the dragomansk’s code…’

‘Jonah, who was it? Who was your enemy?’

‘Them. The Martians.’

The words hung between us in the air like a noose.

‘Jonah, the War for Earth was between the peoples of Earth.’

‘No!’ It was a weird, tormented sound, hardly human. ‘The Martians … the Martians…’

‘Jonah…’

‘They wanted to take everything…’

I felt sick.

‘We built the creatures to defend ourselves … but we couldn’t control them…’ There was an ominous death rattle in his voice now.

‘We chose to go out and be slaughtered … by our own weapons in front of the Martians … the choice was ours, not theirs … we left Earth protected, Bree … from them … from them…’

A crackling began high above us and the old electric lights began to flicker. I was shaking from the impact of what I’d just heard. The alternate crackling and humming intensified until one of the fittings exploded with a bang and a shower of sparks. The humming became like the mad hum of giant insects and the remaining lights became brighter and brighter until they were an intense, near blinding brightness.

And there he was again, Jonah, kneeling before me, so close our knees were nearly touching, and his eyes were open. His eyes. His strange Earth human eyes. I’d seen such eyes before, in paintings and on the statues downstairs, but this was the first time a real pair of Earth human eyes had looked straight into mine. Of course, Jonah and I had got to know each other in the dark, where we seemed so very alike, the biggest difference hadn’t occurred to me. Now I could see him properly and it wasn’t his deathly pale skin or thin, drawn cheeks which startled me but his small eyes about a third the size of my own.

And when Jonah’s small eyes peered into mine, their irises blue as an Earth summer sky, his expression grew so full of horror and disgust I almost turned my head away in shame. For the first time, Jonah could see who and what I was.

There was no time to plead my case, even if I could have found the words. There was a deafening bang and all the fittings exploded at once. Blooms of sparks vanished as they fell to the floor and I knew that I was alone in the dark again, now and forever. Jonah had gone and he wasn’t coming back. The negative image of his mouth and small eyes open in horror lingered a little before melting away into the blackness.

I felt numb. For the next few days I didn’t return to the Museum. I hadn’t the heart and there was no point. Jonah wasn’t coming back. Who could blame him?

Back on site, I set about the mundane tasks I was given pretty mechanically. The cliffs faced the sea and although I had seen this amazing, vast expanse of water once or twice before, now I was there all day long, I could truly appreciate the spectacle, its ever changing appearance against the dramatic, shifting weather in the skies. The waves were dark and silty, unlike the crystal blue waters of the Arabian Sea which had so delighted Halley. There were two islands straight across the water, one steep and the other flat. They looked as lonely as I felt.

Pico and Lana finally discovered what they’d hoped to find, a burial cave. They got very excited about the artefacts they discovered tucked amongst the skeletons which seemed to point to strange, unrecorded rituals. There was so much to do that afternoons off were cancelled. I carried on sifting and scrubbing, labelling and cataloguing, but my heart wasn’t in it. Doubtless our findings would make a fascinating broadcast back to the interDome network on Mars. Well-known experts would debate the discoveries, but interesting though it all was, to me it was just part of a big cover-up, a diversion. Mining surveys were plotting the best areas to begin drilling and extracting the materials from the ground beneath our feet, but they were barely mentioned. When the scientific teams returned to Base from around the country, they didn’t talk to us students about where they’d been or what they’d been doing, almost like they’d been ordered not to.

One afternoon, a brief conversation with Pico made me think he felt the same way. He was taking a break in the mouth of the burial cave and I went to sit beside him. He wasn’t doing anything, just staring out to sea. He didn’t acknowledge me, but he began talking.

‘Beautiful,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t matter how many times I see it, it’s just like that first time.’

‘You said something similar before,’ I said. ‘The day we landed. About the sky.’

‘Uh-huh. Although it’s lonely here and that can get to you.’

We sat in silence awhile.

‘Someday soon it won’t be here,’ I said. ‘That’ll be a shame.’

Pico looked at me quickly then all around us.

‘I wouldn’t let anyone else hear you say that. Not in that tone of voice, anyway.’

‘But don’t you think it’s sad?’

He looked at me steadily for a few moments and nodded.

‘You know, there was a time not so long ago when recolonisation was still the plan,’ he whispered. ‘Once we’d found a way of dealing with the you-know-what problem.’ He cocked his thumb at the sky.

‘That’s what I’d always thought.’

‘Well, it’s true. Somehow, quite recently, those in charge have done a,’ he rotated his finger, ‘180 degree on this one.’

‘Don’t you think if they knew, enough people on Mars would still want recolonisation? Isn’t that what they’d vote for?’

‘If they were given the choice.’ Pico raised his eyebrows.

‘Why not?’ I said. ‘Don’t they deserve a vote? This is where we all come from.’

‘You don’t have to try and persuade me.’ Pico looked around again. ‘Look, we shouldn’t even be talking about this. Forget what I just said. Don’t mention it to anyone, all right? Come on, we have work to do.’

I followed him back through the tunnel into the burial cave, but I couldn’t forget what he’d said. Although the future for Earth seemed so bleak, at least there was someone else who felt the way I did. And if Pico felt that way, others would too.

Each evening we got together with the boys to eat and compare notes, and work on ideas for our next broadcast. Halley didn’t seem bored at Base any longer and he and Nisien appeared to be getting on better, having found a common interest at last. They were still on the testing phase of Nisien’s invention and Halley seemed to have found his purpose in life: causing large explosions of frozen debris. He took a childish delight in challenging Nisien’s machine with larger and larger piles of rubble and wood and the two of them would talk animatedly and wave their arms to illustrate the biggest explosions while Robeen and I just smiled weakly in the right places when we could be bothered.

Nisien had finally settled on a name for the invention. Naturally he’d named it after himself, although the ‘Barroblaster’ (his surname was Barr) wasn’t a name I could imagine anyone taking seriously.

Doc Carter appeared at the clifftop site one afternoon as we were sorting artefacts in the mobile lab. I hadn’t spoken to him properly since our interview about the celephet. Now he was brusque, giving me a quick, forced smile as he asked me to show him the back of my head. I left the delicate glass beads I had been cleaning on the workbench.

‘How’s your analysis going?’ I asked over my shoulder, thinking I’d better show some kind of interest.

‘Encouraging,’ he spoke over my head and I felt his fingertips trace my healing wound. ‘Although we haven’t got our answer yet, I’m confident we will. A few more days at the Museum and I’m certain we’ll succeed. Unbelievable how unlucky we were really, having the celephet catch on something and fall off like that. It’s not a chance I’m willing to risk again. There, good. Healing nicely.’ He patted me on the shoulders to show he’d finished and I let my hair fall back down. ‘In another week we’ll try again. I’ve nearly fixed the celephet. Few more tests, that’s all.’

He walked around me, studying me with cool disdain and I felt a sudden fear. For the first time, I wondered to what lengths he might go to get me to co-operate? If I refused, what then? Would he order me to be held down kicking and screaming, to reconnect his precious invention? Would he anaesthetise me, knocking me out cold to make it easier to reinstall me at the Museum? All the celephet required was a human interface. Did the human in question need to be awake? Although I felt sure Jonah would never willingly reappear to me, it was possible that some traces of his consciousness might remain. I imagined myself, unconscious and chained to a hospital bed in the middle of the fossil room, while the tortured soul of Jonah flew around screaming in agony, like a bird caught in an ever-tightening trap. The image haunted me for the rest of the day.

Back at Base, I tried not to be on my own with Halley. I was afraid of getting into an argument with him and letting something slip. If Halley found out about Jonah and told Doc Carter, that would be it: I’d be chained to the hospital bed, a dumb instrument of torture. It was impossible to avoid him all the time though, and the morning after Carter’s clifftop visit, he sought me out after breakfast.

The second stairwell wasn’t much used and I’d got into a habit of going there to be alone. There was a window on the fourth-floor landing facing north and if you climbed on to the deep sill you had a good view of the brown, distant hills, the local breeding ground of the dragomansk in some old legends. This bleak view mirrored my desolate thoughts. I kept thinking about the War for Earth. How could I accept that I’d been lied to my whole life? That this war had not been fought between the warlike Earth human tribes as we’d all been taught? We oh-so-peace-loving Martians had been the enemy of Earth back then – and we still were. In a sense, the War for Earth had never ended and we, the old enemy, were now gearing up for the final, decisive battle. Ours was just the advance party.

‘There you are.’ I heard Halley descend the short flight of stairs behind me. ‘I’ve been round the building twice trying to find you.’

‘Why were you trying to find me?’

He hauled himself up next to me on the sill. ‘Squeeze up,’ he said, shoving me over. ‘Why shouldn’t I look for you? Still friends, aren’t we? Huh?’

‘Yes,’ I said, with a terse smile.

‘I think I know what’s wrong with you,’ he sung breezily. ‘I’ve worked it out. Earth fever. It’s this place, it gets to you after a while. It’s so big and empty and ruinous and… Well, you mustn’t let it get to you, that’s all. Have you been back to the canals recently?’

‘Not for a while,’ I said.

‘It might help.’ He bumped me softly with his shoulder. ‘Hey, Bree. I think I’ve managed to work my way back into Doc Carter’s good books, finally. How about if we ask to borrow a class one this afternoon and go back to the canals? Or even somewhere new. That’d cheer you up.’

‘I don’t need cheering up,’ I snapped. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Rubbish, you hardly talk these days. I know I’m always messing about but I’ve been worried about you, Bree. Truthfully. Hey, don’t you remember that list we made, of all the things we wanted to do and see on Earth?’

I knew he was going to start talking about Mumbai again.

‘I’ve seen what I came to see.’

Halley sighed. ‘The Museum? And that’s it? There is so much more out there.’ He stressed every word. ‘The jungles in Mumbai are teeming with life the dragomansk can’t reach, monkeys call out to each other in the treetops at dusk, the wild cats prowl in the night and you just catch a flicker of their eyes in the undergrowth. Glowing. They live in caves to escape the worst of the daytime heat.’

‘Halley…’

‘Remember our frog at the canal? Well, we saw several, but that first one, I mean? Wasn’t it a magical moment? There are frogs in every shade of every colour of the rainbow in that jungle, you would not believe your eyes. Acid yellows and greens, neon blues… Some of them live up high in the trees and never come down. There are pools up there in the middle of the leaf-cups and they’re like whole little worlds in themselves.’

‘You’ve told me this before.’

‘You’re just like one of those frogs, you know that? The Museum’s become your little pool, but there’s a lot more to explore, even around here.’ Annoyance crept into his voice.

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know what’s been going on at the Museum. I’ve been doing a lot more there than you think.’ This was getting dangerous.

‘Oh come on!’ he cried in exasperation. ‘What’s wrong with you? It’s as if now you’re here, you’ve shut down. Writing poems in that place seems to be your only goal in life.’

‘I don’t go there now, do I?’

‘And you’re just moping because you can’t. But don’t you understand what I’m saying? Forget the Museum, Bree. It’ll be time to go back home before we know it and right now is when you should be making the most of your time here on Earth.’

‘Because it’s not going to be here much longer? Not when the diggers move in? As soon as we find a way of getting rid of the dragomansk, that can happen much, much quicker, can’t it?’

He looked stunned, as though I’d slapped him.

‘It’s going to happen anyway,’ he said in a small voice. ‘DNA’s been collected from all these creatures. It’s all in storage on Mars. This world can be reproduced again someday.’

‘They won’t have collected all the DNA, how can they have? It’s impossible. And anyway, they’ll never recreate this again!’

‘It’s going to happen, no matter what we do. It’s our Great Quest and Purpose, Bree.’

Halley sounded utterly deflated. I didn’t answer, it was best not to, but I so wanted to tell him what a massive, massive hypocrite he was, pretending to be so concerned about Earth whilst all the time he was helping destroy it by doing Carter’s dirty work.

‘I just think you should make the most of your time here, that’s all,’ he repeated in a small voice and jumping from the windowsill, he left without saying any more. I returned to the desolate view while his footsteps echoed on the stairs.