It called to her. The darkness.
She stared at the infinite horizon, water lapping noiselessly at her feet.
The wind sighed, a whisper in the fathomless night. The dry susurration filtered through her mind and lured her forward. She took a step, then another. Soon, the water reached her thighs.
Laura Cabe stirred and opened her eyes. She blinked at the clock on the cabin wall. The iridescent green glow cast ghostly shadows across the smooth, white surface, indicating a local solar time of 02:30. Below it, smaller numbers showed a Mars time of 04:43 at the Airy Crater, the planet’s prime meridian.
She sat up slowly and ran her fingers through her tangled hair. Something had roused her from sleep. She looked toward the door.
The hum of the station’s bioregenerative life support system was a steady background sound, one to which her senses had become attuned since her arrival on the Mars Baker2 Colony ten solar days ago. Other than the occasional rattle from the unit’s heating system and the soft sound of her own breathing, she could hear nothing else.
She was about to lie down when she heard it again. The noise was faint, as if it had traveled from a distance. Hairs rose on her arms.
It sounded like a scream.
Laura stared at the pale lines of the cabin’s austere furnishings and waited. Silence prevailed outside the cabin. She frowned.
Had she imagined it?
She hesitated before rising from the bed and slipping into her work suit. She crossed the floor and paused by the com port next to the door. Her fingers hovered above the row of buttons as she considered calling McAllister, the station manager on nightshift in the command center. She lowered her hand; better to investigate first before troubling the man with a false alarm. She had liked the burly geophysicist from the moment she met him and knew he would not mind her disturbing him so late in the night. Still, the scientist had plenty on his plate right now.
Laura unlocked the door and moved quietly into the corridor outside the cabin. The panel closed soundlessly behind her, revealing the fresh nameplate screwed into the hard plastic. Dr Laura Cabe, MD glittered in the pale light cast by the security lamp in the ceiling.
Sunrise was not for another three hours at their current location on the Acidalia Planitia, in the northern Martian hemisphere. The colony was shrouded in darkness.
Her room was next to the station’s MediLab. Laura studied the shadowy space of the state-of-the-art medical facility beyond the glass walls to her left before glancing at the living unit directly across the passage. The name on the opposite door read Dr Alice Cho, MD.
Dr Cho was Baker2’s principal physician. She was also one of nine colonists who had disappeared from the station in the last two hundred and thirty Mars sol days.
The MediLab was at the south pole of the cross-shaped, pressurized system of geodesic domes that housed the main colony. The south arm was home to several research labs, including the ones dedicated to biological sciences, ecology, and palaeontology. Engineering, geosciences, and atmospheric science took up the western branch of the cross. Social science was the only discipline that had earned the right to be accommodated within the colonists’ main living quarters in the north arm of the structure.
As she headed along the silent corridor toward the command center, she passed the giant cupola of the botany lab and paused to stare through the glass walls. Even though she had been in the greenhouse to interview Dr Jennifer Chaplin, the chief botanist, on several occasions, she was still amazed at the diversity of plants the Mars colonists had cultivated in the fifteen years they had been at the site. She dragged her gaze from the rows of artificial light and sprayers and continued down the interconnecting passage to the core of the colony.
Today was Earth date June 10, 2085. On Mars, it was Sol date 75167.
She had arrived at the Zubrin Space Station on Sol date 75132 but had had to wait a month in orbit before making it to the planet’s surface; that was how long it took for the dust storm that had blown up from the Chryse Basin and engulfed the entire northern hemisphere to settle. Although she felt frustrated at being forced to take a detour from her original mission to join the Jupiter Europa Space Station, she had spent enough hours reading the investigative reports on the disappearances that had taken place at the Baker2 station to be intrigued.
Mankind’s aim to colonize Mars received a much-needed financial boost after the success of the first Mars Sample Return Mission in 2024, under the Joint Exploration Initiative established by NASA and the European Space Agency. The scientific yield from that one venture alone hinted at large deposits of deuterium and platinum among a dozen other minerals beneath the planet’s surface, making Mars a wholly worthwhile investment. The first manned vehicle to Mars landed on the Meridiani Planum two degrees south of the planet’s equator in 2040. Twenty years later, the Mars Orbit Zubrin Space Station was completed. It was the largest of its kind in the solar system, dwarfing Earth’s two international space stations.
There were now five colonies on Mars, all involved in the long and arduous process of terraforming the planet for future human settlement. Mars Baker2 was the second oldest of the outposts. Under the command of Dr Ralph McAllister, the Senior Planetary Geosciences Leader for the combined Mars colonies, it was home to twenty scientists. There were plans to double that number by 2092.
The first colonist went missing seven solar days after the transit of Earth from Mars, when the human race’s home planet passed between the sun and the Red Planet on November 10, 2084. By the end of February, seven more had gone missing. An emergency investigation team from the Zubrin Space Station was sent down to the surface to address the mystery of the disappearing colonists. While they were there, another colonist went missing. The team had yet to come to any definitive conclusions.
The most perturbing aspect of their reports related to the lack of physical traces left by the vanished scientists, compounded by the sheer suddenness of the events. Four of the colonists disappeared while on their way to check two greenhouse factories a couple of miles from the station. Another three went missing after going to investigate a remote alarm raised at the nuclear power plant that supplied most of the colony’s energy needs; the alarm had subsequently turned out to be false.
More worryingly still, all the missing scientists had been in groups of at least two people, as was the protocol when they worked outside the pressurized station.
The final comment made by the investigative team’s chief psychologist was the reason why Laura had been sent to Mars. During the six weeks they spent looking into the disappearances at the Baker2 colony, several of the investigators had noted the subtle element of paranoia and fear that permeated the remaining residents’ psyche. Concerned about Subliminal Distraction exposure, a previously contested but now well-explored psychological phenomenon that had led to psychotic breakdowns on prior space missions and historical nautical ventures on Earth, the Zubrin Space Station commander had requested an urgent assessment of the remaining Baker2 settlers by an MD with expertise in neuropsychiatry and neuropsychology.
Of the eleven colonists she had interviewed, the one who caused Laura the most concern was Jennifer Chaplin. A close friend of Alice Cho, the last person to disappear from the Mars station, the woman had come across as jittery and evasive.
During their meetings in the greenhouse, Laura had observed the botanist glancing repeatedly over her shoulder, as if looking for something that was not there. When she asked the scientist about it, the woman’s eyes had widened in horror and she had almost fallen off her chair in her frantic efforts to turn and scrutinize the empty space at her back.
‘I think I’m hallucinating,’ Chaplin finally admitted after a tense minute. Her voice was hoarse, her skin pallid.
Laura knew not to dismiss her fears. ‘What do you imagine you’re seeing?’
The scientist bit her lip. She hesitated before whispering, ‘Cho,’ in an almost inaudible voice. ‘Even though I know she’s gone, I keep seeing her,’ Chaplin explained. ‘It’s hard to describe. It’s like she’s there, but not really there, as if I can just glimpse her figure out of the corner of my eye. At first, it was only happening about once a week. Now, I see her every day.’ She grimaced and clutched her head. ‘It’s driving me insane.’
Laura noted her trembling fingers and dilated pupils. ‘Are you sleeping well?’
For a moment, Chaplin looked surprised. A burst of hysterical laughter escaped her lips. ‘Would you sleep if you kept seeing your dead friend?’
Laura was silent for a while. ‘What makes you think Dr Cho is dead?’
The woman’s eyes widened. ‘She’s got to be, hasn’t she?’ Panic lent a tremor to her voice. ‘I mean, all of them have to be dead. Where else would they have gone on this godforsaken planet?’
‘Do you know what happened to them?’
A defensive expression dawned on the botanist’s face. ‘How would I know something like that? Like I told the first investigators, none of us had anything to do with the disappearances.’ She bit her lip again before abruptly adding, ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.’
The scientist had refused her offer of a sleeping pill but reluctantly agreed to another meeting later the next day.
Laura turned the corner of the passage presently and saw the door to the command center ahead of her; cold artificial light streamed through the opening. Seconds later, she stepped inside the brightly lit dome, an apologetic smile on her face as she prepared to explain her presence in the colony’s telecommunications hub to the station manager. Halfway across the floor, she stopped and stared, the smile slipping from her lips.
The room was empty. She glanced from the mug of coffee in front of the main console to a narrow door on her left. From her tour of the facilities, she knew it led to a bathroom and sleeping cot for when the colonists wanted to take a break. She took several steps toward the door, expecting it to open at any moment. When it failed to do so, she pressed the open key and watched the panel slide aside.
The space beyond was also empty.
Laura frowned. She recalled one of the scientists mentioning leaving his post in the command center one night to investigate an alarm in the MediLab.
That was the night Alice Cho disappeared.
Laura turned and crossed the floor to the control panel; maybe McAllister had gone to look into the source of the noise that had woken her.
An old-fashioned clipboard hung on the wall next to the work console. She studied the list on it and found the geophysicist’s personal radio code. She entered the numbers into the com port’s touch screen and waited.
After several seconds, she tried the code again. There was still no response. She was about to enter it a third time when a sudden burst of static came through the speakers, making her jump.
‘Hello, Ralph? This is Laura Cabe. I’m in the command center. Where are you?’ she said into the com link. There was a soft rustle. Laura glanced over her shoulder. There was no one there. She realized the sound had come from the com port. ‘Ralph? Can you hear me?’ The rustle came again. It was followed by the sound of labored breathing. She heard a low moan. ‘Ralph?’
Silence followed. Then, a shrill and tremulous whimper rose from the speakers. ‘Oh God! Oh God! No, no, please, no—’
The voice cut off abruptly and the line went dead.
Laura froze and stared at the console. For the first time since her arrival at the colony, she felt a cold prickle of fear. She dialled the geophysicist’s radio code again. White noise filled the room.
She turned and studied the dark corridor outside the command center. It remained resolutely empty. She hesitated before crossing the floor and pressing the control pad. The door slid closed. She gazed through the narrow window at the top, engaged the lock, and returned to the control desk.
She glanced at the list on the clipboard and dialled another number. Bill Doors was the station’s chief engineer and next in command after McAllister. While she waited for him to respond, she studied the digital panel above the console. All the lights were green. There were no alarms in any sector of the colony.
The number rang out. A trickle of dread coursed down Laura’s back. She tried again.
There was a click after the fifth ring.
‘Bill? Thank God! Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but I think Ralph is in trouble...’ She paused and stared at the com port. ‘Bill?’
Static erupted from the speakers.
Laura sat down, her knees shaking. She looked at the numbers of the remaining colonists and tried them one after the other. All the lines were dead.
She gazed at the main console for timeless seconds.
What was going on?
She glanced at the door and considered heading for the station’s living quarters. The com links might just be disabled, in which case the colonists were likely sleeping soundly in their beds.
She recalled the voice that had issued from McAllister’s radio; she was almost certain it had belonged to the geophysicist. The terror in it had been undeniable.
Laura came to a decision. After logging into the command computer, she touched the uplink to the space station. The screen flashed immediately, displaying the words Unable to link to MOZST. She swore under her breath and looked around the room.
Her gaze landed on a map on the wall. ‘Yes!’
She grabbed the clipboard and flipped through the lists until she found the numbers she wanted. She turned to the com port and keyed in the code for the Baker1 colony.
A buzz of static rose from the speakers. She dialled the number again. The white noise persisted. Laura frowned. Was there a dust storm blocking the transmission?
She tapped the computer screen and uploaded the latest satellite images of the planet. Mars appeared on the monitor. Baker1’s location on Terra Meridiani looked clear, as did the rest of the planet’s surface. She tried the numbers for the other colonies without success.
Laura stared at the display. She hesitated before touching an icon on the bottom right corner. Rows of pictures appeared across the monitor.
They were the security feeds from the cameras around the colony. She tapped on each frame and studied the full-size images that filled the screen.
Most of the research labs were shrouded in darkness. Her gaze skimmed over the monitor, looking for movement in the gloom. She blinked as the brightly lit greenhouse appeared on the screen; it was also empty. She turned her attention to the colonists’ living quarters.
The first camera showed a wide-angle view of the main corridor onto which the units opened. Cloaked in shadows, it was devoid of any sign of life. She was about to move to another frame when something caught her eye. She leaned forward and squinted at the monitor.
The doors were all ajar.
Laura touched the screen. Another image filled the monitor. It was from a camera halfway down the passageway and showed a close-up of two of the doors. The rooms beyond were pitch black. As she watched, the door on the left swung closed.
Laura gasped. It was Jennifer Chaplin’s room. She reached for the com port and tried the botanist’s radio code again. Static crackled from the speakers.
Acid flooded her mouth. Her fingers shook as she switched to the cameras outside the station. On the third frame, she saw the radio antenna in the glow of the outer security lights that bathed the perimeter of the colony in brightness. It was hanging off its mast.
Laura stared at the tangled wreck of metal for a long time before moving to the next camera. On the fifth frame, she saw a figure at the edge of the screen. Her breath caught in her throat. She zoomed in on the silhouette.
Her eyes widened. It was Alice Cho.
The woman was standing next to one of the methane propellant depots. As Laura watched, Cho turned to stare directly at the camera.
A harsh cry left Laura’s lips.
Motion on one of the other frames caught her terrified gaze. Her heart slammed against her ribs. She was looking at one of the internal security feeds; it was from the camera outside the command center.
Someone was standing on the other side of the door.
Laura wheeled around and stared at the window in the top of the plastic panel. There was nobody there. She turned back to the screen to find the figure gone.
She rose shakily from her seat, crossed the floor to the door, and studied the empty corridor beyond. A minute passed. She returned to the console.
Alice Cho had also disappeared from the screen.
She concentrated on reviewing the remaining frames and tried hard not to think about what she had just seen.
The missing colonist had been standing outside the station in Mars’ sub-zero, low-gravity, oxygen-sparse atmosphere. She had not been wearing a pressurized spacesuit.
Moments later, Laura saw a lone figure walking away from the colony. This one was clad in an extravehicular mobility unit with a portable life support system. She zoomed in on the frame.
All the scientists at the colony had personalized spacesuits. Laura made out the letters ‘J. Chaplin’ between the shoulder blades of the disappearing figure.
She scanned the other cameras. Aside from views of Mars’ barren surface, they showed nothing alarming. She ran her fingers through her hair and stared at the control desk, her mind racing frantically as she considered her options.
Should she stay in the command center and try to contact the space station and the other colonies again, or should she go after the woman?
Laura bit her lip. She had to go after Chaplin; the scientist might lead her to the others. After studying the internal camera feeds one last time, she left the command center and made her way to the colonists’ living quarters.
It was abandoned, as the cameras had suggested. There were no visible signs of struggle in any of the units. For all intents and purposes, it looked as if the scientists had simply walked out of the colony.
Laura found what she was looking for in a hanger in the east branch of the habitat. As well as housing most of the hardware the scientists needed to function on Mars, the hanger also contained spare spacesuits with individual life support packs, two pressurized surface rovers, a further three unpressurized rovers, and several utility trucks.
Laura slipped into one of the suits, adjusted the helmet, and tested the life support system. Once she was satisfied, she headed for one of the pressurized rovers. As she passed a tool rack, she paused and stared at the instruments on display. She reached for a hammer before climbing into the rover and driving the vehicle inside the airlock. Minutes later, the outer door opened. She guided the rover onto the Martian surface.
Howling winds immediately rose around her, whipping the planet’s red, haematite-rich dust across the windscreen. She peered through the thick plastic and glanced at the map on the passenger seat.
In the camera feed she had seen earlier, Jennifer Chaplin had been heading northwest from the colony. Laura manoeuvred the vehicle in that direction. The mangled frame of the station’s antenna disappeared behind her. Soon, she was outside the range of the colony’s security lights.
The rover’s weak beams barely penetrated the rising sandstorm. Three miles later, she finally caught sight of the white figure stumbling across the Martian landscape.
Laura glanced at the map. She was surprised the botanist had made it this far so quickly. She looked up and blinked; the figure had disappeared. Seconds later, she gasped and braked abruptly.
The front wheels of the rover skidded to a stop near the edge of a chasm.
Laura stared through the dancing dust at the gaping abyss before her and studied the map again. She frowned. There were no canyons or valleys in this part of the Acidalia Planitia. She hesitated before collecting the hammer and climbing inside the vehicle’s airlock. Moments later, she stepped out onto the Martian surface.
Though she had prepared herself for the harsh winds, Laura was still shocked by the intensity and noise of the storm. It screamed in her ears and rocked her body, its presence almost organic, its intent seemingly hostile. She steadied herself against the rover and took a careful step forward.
She found herself on the eastern lip of a crater. As her gaze spanned the mile-long basin, she caught motion out of the corner of her eyes. A hundred feet to her left, a figure scrambled down the wall of the depression; it was heading toward a crevice near the floor of the basin.
Something strange at the center of the crater drew her gaze. A large, oddly shaped, grey-white structure floated in the middle of the bowl, as if suspended on unseen strings. As her mind struggled to make sense of what her eyes were seeing, she slowly looked up.
In the dark sky above Mars, the moon Phobos was rising from the west.
Laura’s gaze drifted down again. What she was seeing was a reflection of the Martian satellite.
A gust of wind blew over the edge of the crater and danced down its walls. At the bottom, thin ripples broke across the surface of the dark liquid that filled its depths.
All of her senses screamed at her to run.
Laura looked to her left, her pulse racing. The figure had disappeared into the crack in the wall. She gripped the handle of the hammer and headed down the slope. Moments later, she reached the opening in the vertical rock face. She studied the darkness beyond before stepping inside.
The lights on her helmet illuminated the rugged sides of a narrow tunnel. Laura looked down; there were footprints in the dust. She took a shaky breath and started forward.
The noise of the wind died down. Soon, all she could hear was the sound of her own ragged breathing. She stopped and checked her oxygen monitor; the pack was still at eighty percent. She willed herself to breathe slowly and continued walking.
The tunnel gradually sloped downward, twisting on itself. Other passages emerged from the darkness, their walls carved smooth by centuries of wind and dust. The shafts soon merged into each other like a web of interconnecting burrows.
On several occasions, Laura thought she sensed movement behind her. However many times she wheeled around, she found no one there.
The tunnel finally opened out onto a long, narrow ledge. Laura slowed and looked up.
The beams from her helmet barely penetrated the gloom above her. They did, however, manage to cast a weak light on the distant roof of a vast cave. She stopped near the lip of the ledge. Her gaze drifted downward. That was when she saw them.
A hundred feet to her left, the missing colonists stood in a silent cluster on the edge of the outcrop. Ralph McAllister was among them. So was Jennifer Chaplin.
They were staring into the darkness beyond the rock shelf. None of them wore a pressurized suit. As if sensing her gaze, they turned and looked at her.
Laura screamed.
There was motion at the edge of her vision. She turned and felt her foot slip on the uneven ground. It gave beneath her.
Someone grabbed her flailing hand. She looked past the arm of her suit into the cold and bottomless eyes of Alice Cho. The woman smiled and let go.
A strangled cry left Laura’s lips as she fell into the abyss. Seconds later, her back hit something hard. She grunted and rolled down a steep slope.
The glass covering the lights on her helmet cracked, fracturing the beams into spinning, jagged shards of brightness. Somewhere along her seemingly endless tumble, she heard the ominous hiss of precious oxygen leaking from her ruptured life support unit.
Her fall finally came to an end. She lay on the ground for a stunned moment, her breath coming in short, harsh gasps, surprised she was still alive. One of the lights on her suit winked out. As she rolled onto her front and crawled to her knees, the second light dimmed.
Laura slowly struggled to her feet. She glanced at her hand dazedly, stunned to see it still gripping the hammer. There was a sheer wall before her. She turned and faced the space at her back.
The void was endless. It gaped into infinity, a dark maw with a limitless horizon.
The hammer dropped from her hand and splashed into the black liquid washing over her feet. A breeze blew through the darkness and breathed her name.
She took a step forward.
Gary Armstrong cursed as the rover hit a shallow ditch. The engine roared and quickly powered the vehicle up and onto the rocky Martian terrain.
‘Easy,’ murmured his companion.
Armstrong glanced sideways and scowled. He had known his co-pilot, palaeontologist Elmer Gatsby, for five years. That was how long the engineer had been stationed at the Mars Baker5 colony on the Chryse Planitia. Although he had spent endless months in the older man’s company, he still found his presence grating.
It had been a fortnight since they lost all contact with the Baker2 colony. Despite being hailed by the other Mars outposts and the orbiting Zubrin space station, there had been no response from the Acidalia Planitia settlement. All signs appeared to point to a faulty radio mast. Mars Baker5 being the closest station to Baker2, Zubrin had ordered a team to travel there to investigate.
Armstrong maneuvered the rover around a large boulder. ‘How far now?’ he said impatiently.
‘Give or take, about one mile,’ Gatsby replied.
Armstrong’s frown deepened.
What was that, ‘Give or take a mile’? They had a goddamned map, didn’t they?
Moments later, the white domes of the colony appeared through the red dust.
Armstrong sighed. Had it not been for another blasted sandstorm, they would have been here a week earlier. His eyes slowly widened. ‘Hell. That explains why we couldn’t get through.’ He stared at the mangled remains of the station’s antenna. ‘I wonder how that happened.’
Gatsby did not reply. Armstrong glanced at him.
The palaeontologist was looking straight ahead. ‘I’d slow down if I were you,’ he said quietly.
Armstrong looked around, swore, and slammed on the brakes. The rover juddered to a stop.
A figure in a pressurized spacesuit stood watching them a few feet from the front bumper of the vehicle.
‘What the—?’ Armstrong looked sideways and saw Gatsby pull the helmet of his extravehicular mobility unit over his head.
‘Let’s go say hello, shall we?’ said the palaeontologist. Armstrong stared at the older man and grunted. He entered the airlock and climbed out of the rover after him.
The figure had not moved.
Gatsby walked to the front of the vehicle. His voice came through Armstrong’s com line. ‘Hi. Can you hear us? We’re from the Baker5 colony.’
The figure remained silent.
The palaeontologist turned to him. ‘Are they on the same radio frequency as us?’
Armstrong shrugged. ‘As far as I know, yes. It’s standard protocol across the colonies.’ Unease filtered through him as he watched Gatsby head toward the motionless figure. Something was not right.
His gaze dropped. The figure was holding something in its hand.
Armstrong’s eyes widened. He shouted a warning.
Gatsby paused and turned.
The hammer swung through the air and hit his face shield. The plastic cracked. The weapon arced through the howling Martian wind and struck him again. The palaeontologist fell to the ground, his strangled gasps harsh in Armstrong’s ears as his body convulsed from acute, severe hypoxia. The engineer stared from the dying man to the figure holding the hammer.
It pulled off its gloves, reached up, and undid its helmet.
Armstrong heard a faint whimper. It had come from his own lips.
A dark liquid oozed from beneath the sleeve of the figure’s spacesuit and fell inside Gatsby’s smashed face shield.
The helmet came off.
Laura Cabe smiled, her eyes as black and as fathomless as space.
THE END