AS THE DOORS OPENfully, a red world spreads out before us, shrouded in the haze of the dust storm.
To the east lie vast acres of solar arrays and the heads of the water pumps, which stand up above the fields of reflective black panels like giant scarecrows. They’re just shadows against the murky sky, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up, like some part of my brain thinks they’re giant predators that could come striding toward me at any moment.
It’s a weird thought, and I shake it off as I follow Cleo out of the airlock to begin our walk around the outside of the base. My first time outside in a suit, and she’s given me seventeen different kinds of safety lectures.
Coming to Mars was always about gain, for me. It was about snatching back opportunities Marguerite stole from me. About pushing my mother to acknowledge what I did back on Earth,however the execs try to cover it up. The determination that if my family wouldn’t give me my birthright as a Graves, then I’d take it. Marguerite has spent years setting herself up to take over GravesUP one day. To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if she picked that day herself and cut Mom’s throat when she’s ready. Metaphorically speaking. Probably.
I came here prepared to cut hers, prepared to play exactly the same game.
But I wasn’t prepared for this place to be so beautiful.
The Martian regolith is different from the dirt on Earth, and the red dust is so much lighter than our dirt that it simply hangs suspended in the air like fog, concealing the plains of Arcadia Planitia behind its mystery.
Cleo’s a few steps ahead of me, trailing her gloved hand along the side of the hab, leaving tracks in the dust there. Most of the base is buried under rock and dirt, but it has to surface in a few places, to let folks in and out. It does where we exited the greenhouse, and now we have a trek across the uneven ground that was laid on top of the base when it was built, before we reach the aboveground garage on the west side, where we’ll meet Rover. It should take less than twenty minutes, if all goes well.
All I can hear inside my helmet is my own breathing, for the first fifteen minutes or so. Something about this place invites you to stay quiet, to soak it in. I didn’t think it would hit me so hard, walking on the surface of another planet, but I feel incredibly small right now. As if even if I spoke, my voice would be so soft that this ancient place would just swallow it up.
I study Cleo’s profile as she clambers over a rocky outcrop, then carefully slides down the other side. We’re coming up on the entrance to the main western garage, the building jutting up out of the ground.
The dust is getting thicker all around us, more of it suspended in the air. When I look back – which means turning my whole body, since I can’t turn the head of my pressure suit – I can’t see where we came from anymore. The back of my neck prickles.
If we’d set off even a few minutes later, we wouldn’t have been able to see where we were heading.
Cleo gestures toward the murky shape ahead of us, a new urgency in the quick cut of her hand, and I move a little faster to catch up with her. We’re on a downward slope now, nearly there.
Right after I talked to Marguerite for the last time, I told my therapist that connections to other people just make you vulnerable. Just hurt, when they break. And that’s true, but also, it’s not.
If Cleo was hurt, or worse, something in me would break. Something about the enormity of this place makes it impossible to bullshit myself – I care about her. I want to know who she is, to learn her story. I want the time together that’ll take.
But the thing about Cleo is that she hasn’tjustmade me vulnerable, she’s made me brave enough to do this too. How could I be anything else around a girl like this?
A couple of strides bring me up alongside her, and I reach for her hand, and she catches me in her peripheral vision and letsme take it. When we get into that rover, when we’re speeding away from here, I’m going to—
A rock gives way under Cleo’s foot, and she falls, her hand yanked from mine, the sudden release making her lose her balance completely. She hits the ground and rolls down the slope toward the garage, hands flying out to try to stop herself.
The power-and-air unit on the back of her suit smashes into a rock, a cord whipping free and snaking around like a living thing as it vents her precious oxygen.
‘Cleo!’ I’m sprinting after her before I can think, dropping to my knees to skid in beside her where she’s sprawled on the ground.
Her lips are moving, her words trapped inside her helmet. Her eyes are huge, mouth open as if she’s already struggling for air.
I grab at the cord that was venting her O2, my gloved fingers fumbling as I yank it in close to my helmet, trying to see if the auto shutoff has worked. It’s stopped wriggling, so I think it has – I can only hope there’s enough air left in there to keep her going until we get inside. And we have more problems than the air, of course. Without power, the heating coils in her suit will already be cooling.
I reach for her elbow to help her to her feet, and she shakes off my hand, big brown eyes trying silently to communicate something to me. She flicks her gaze down, and when I follow it, I realize she has her right hand clapped over her left forearm in a death grip. The rocks she fell onto must have torn the suit.
Which means there’s no way to know how much air she has left.
An eddy of dust swirls around us, turning her fuzzy for a moment. And that’s when I realize I can’t see where the garage is anymore.
The world has turned red, trapping Cleo and me in our own private dust storm, with zero visibility.
My body’s turning so cold that it feels like my own suit’s lost heating, but I know it’s just fear. I know that – even if I can’t make myself believe it. I force my breath to come more slowly, but I can hear the ragged edge to it.
Slowly, so slowly, I climb to my feet, and lean down to wrap my arms around Cleo, helping her clamber up without releasing her grip on the torn arm of her suit. She’s shaking in my arms.
I walk the pair of us slowly forward, steering her toward where I think the garage entrance is. We take one step together, two, three, then ten, falling into a shuffling rhythm.
But the airlock’s taking forever to show up. Am I definitely walking in the right direction?
