Martian Helix by A. E. Engle

Martian Helix by A. E. Engle

Hina never quite got used to the view from her lab on Sirius Station. Staring down at the red rock, she always expected to see blue oceans, and drifting white clouds. But here in orbit around the God of War, she always thought she was continuously flying over Nevada, Utah, or the Sahara.

She pressed a comm button.

“How’s Rover 1 Wolf?”

“Still roving,” the voice on the other end of the comm said.

“How many samples?”

Hina stared out the window.

Red.

“Looks like 25. Ready for them?”

“Yeah. Send them on up.”

& & &

The dry surface of Mars is an unforgiving place. Even the lifespan of mechanical things is short-lived as circuits and gears fill with the continuous onslaught of oxidized dust. Even the surface of mechanical things, in time, begin to look like Mars.

Red. Rusty. Covered with dust.

Officially called GARSCLV-1, the Grid-Aligned Roaming Sample Collection and Launch Vehicle, affectionately called “Rover”, reached out it’s nano-coated robotic arm and collected an inch of topsoil in a small metallic sample container it held on the end. It pulled its arm back and fitted the container into a grooved slot where it locked in on a magnetic base. Another arm extended out, pressurized, and capped the container, then the cylinder rotated to wipe dust from the canister and wrap a seal of foil tape around the lid. The foil was coded with the exact coordinates, sol date, and time on a magnetic strip. Both arms moved away and the carrier rotated and the cylinder dropped into a tube in the storage compartment of the Rover.

The ‘head’ of Rover turned, lowered, then locked into place.

Rover was an all-terrain vehicle with eight tracked wheel pods. On top of the wheel base sat the main platform approximately 15′ x 10′ which housed the Rover’s main circuitry, the sample tubes, supplies, etc. Rover’s arm could extend to thirty feet. The sample storage housed approximately 50 sample tubes, each of which could be reloaded four times. It could send 200 samples up to the station before having to be resupplied by RovStat, the docking garage on Sirius where Rover was cleaned, recharged, and reloaded.

Besides the ability to collect and store the soil, Rover also had the capability to return the samples (and itself from one of the staged hyper-launch sites) to Sirius Station from the surface of Mars.

Rover sealed its core computer, then beeped three times. A flame shot from its surface with a loud thwap. Three beeps. Thwap. Three beeps. Thwap.

Each cylinder with a dirt sample launched from Rover into the air on a trajectory to low orbit. One by one, 3 seconds apart, the cylinders flew, launched from Rover to an altitude of 500 feet before a second stage fired taking the cylinder to 4,000 feet above the surface, much like a model rocket. One by one, all 25 samples launched into the air, fired, then floated into space to be recovered by one of Sirius Station’s Orbital Recovery Units (FIDO).

“Samples are up,” Wolf said.

“Right.” Hina looked out the window. “Be right down.”

& & &

She walked from the ladder then floated down the chute and into the command tube. She entered the command module. Wolf was sitting at the pilot’s station, staring out at the God of War. Hina slid into the seat next to him and buckled in. She leaned over the control panel.

“Ready to launch Fido.”

“Fido is docked and ready.”

“On my mark in 3, 2, 1. Launch.”

Hina pushed a button. Fido, the retriever, slid out of its docking bay then fired retros. Fido would lock on to each samples signal, fly to it, grab the sample with its electro-magnetic arm and stow it a tube, then fly back to Sirius and re-dock. From there, Hina would collect the samples from the bin as Fido, one by one, would detach the electro-mag and the cylinder would fall out into the catch, then roll down to the bin where they would stack up, one by one.

“Well, since this will take a few, I’m hittin’ the head. Need anything from the galley?” Hina glanced at Wolf.

“No. I’ll be down in a few.”

“Suit yourself.”

Wolf left the Command module. Hina watched the monitor tracking Fido retrieving the samples. There was a beeping from the console. Weather update. She read the message, then started the routine to shut down Rover 1 for the next 12 hours until the dust storm passed. She still had three Rovers working, two of them deep core samplers. As the station drifted in orbit around Mars the retriever would be left behind to catch them on the flip side.

She checked the other three Rovers. Rover 3 had fifteen deep core samples, as did Rover 4, taking a 5 foot deep sample every .25 kilometers on a 10 square kilometer grid. Each sample was geotagged to the grid area. If anything unusual turned up, like some new metal foreign in our solar system, they would know where to dig on a later mission.

She thought about that. An undiscovered metal. Probably more profitable than finding life. Mars, like her, had no life. Back home she was a loner, always studying, working on her dissertation, prepping for this moment. Now, staring out a window at another planet. It still hadn’t resonated.

“Stratton, you coming down?” Wolf said over the comm.

“Yeah. Just a sec.” Wolf was just as lonely as she was. It was a big station for two people. They could easily disappear from each other.

She stood and flowed through the tube, laddered up two decks, past the sleeping racks and the graveyard – the area where the others slept in hyper sleep — and on to the galley. A gray room much like a break room with a special microwave and fridge, and small kitchen. All the food was in vacuum sealed pouches. It’s not like Mars had a corner grocery store.

“Plenty of samples to keep you busy,” Wolf said.

“Yeah.”

“You ok?”

“Yeah. Just getting cabin fever, I guess. Never really get to leave work here, do we?” She chuckled.

Wolf slid a bowl of something to her.

“Eat something. It’s vitamin D rich to keep us from ejecting ourselves from an air lock.” He smirked. She moved the porridge like substance around with a spoon. “Tea is ready too.” Tea, she thought. Tea for two! She stood and walked to the counter. She glanced at the plant display with fresh herbs growing in it. She poured a cup of tea and sat down. She took a bite.

“I know my job is to analyze this soil from a dead planet,” she said. “But am I being too hopeful? We’ve analyzed plenty of samples on multiple missions. Nothing.”

Wolf leaned forward.

“When you look out the window, what do you see?”

“Mars.”

“Exactly. Not Earth. So what if you don’t find anything? You’re orbiting fucking Mars!” He laughed. “How many people you know can say that?”

“A couple.”

“That’s your problem. You need friends outside the mission.”

“I never said I didn’t have friends outside the mission.” He squinted at her. She sighed. “Ok. Not many.” He squinted harder. “Not… Geez, is my social life that dull?”

“Yeah. It is. I should know. Mine is too.” He did a hard swallow on the protein paste, then washed it down with some water. “Guess it’s back to command. How long on FIDO?”

“A while. We’ll pick it up on the next orbit.”

He looked at his watch. “2 hours, got it.” He walked to the ladder and turned. “Any other samples?”

“Not yet. Not enough. Next trip.”

“Sounds like next trip will be fun.”

“Yeah,” Hina said. “I’ll be up shortly.”

Wolf launched himself down the tube and disappeared.

Hina sighed, took out a hand held from her flight suit and read. An escape into a fantasy world of evil Martians and cosmic heroes who sweep in and save the damsel in distress.

& & &

Wolf heard Hina’s footsteps, and he popped out of a drowsy snooze.

“Hey!” He looked at his watch, sat up, and checked the monitors. “Oh man.” He shook the cobwebs of slumber from his head. “2 Hours.” Hina sat in the Commander’s chair and pulled up the sample readings.

“Looks like Rover 3 & 4 will be ready to launch soon.”

“How’s the weather?”

“Clear, for now. Nothing on the horizon.” She looked out the window. “They’re right below us. No visible weather.”

“It’s a desolate rock, for sure.”

“A bit like Utah.”

“Yeah. I guess. Never been.”

“I’ll save you the trip. It looks like that.” She pointed out the window. A flashing light popped up on the screen in front of her.

“FIDO has all the samples except one. Unable to locate.” She tapped on her control panel. “Tracker is dead, no signal.”

“Think it fell back?”

“Possible. Unlikely though. Probably a dead power cell.”

“Thought they ran on triple charges, as needed.”

“Yeah. Something’s wrong with it.”

“Knowing our luck, it’s probably the one with actual signs of life.” He chuckled at his own joke.

“I have its last known. FIDO is in the vicinity.” She tapped a few more choices on the control panel and the display changed to one of FIDO’s six cameras. She tapped a small finger controlled joystick and FIDO rotated, then moved forward, its movements hard to comprehend with no horizon or object to navigate by. She tapped on the number pad and turned FIDO to the last known coordinates of the sample.

“I see it,” said Wolf.

The metallic container glinted off some distant light. Hina tapped controls, moved a cursor on the screen to the cylinder, tapped to mark it, then hit a button. FIDO moved to the cylinder, reached out, pulled it in, and stored it.

“Good work.”

“Now, if it is the one with all the life, we’re good to go, yeah?” said Hina.

She smiled at Wolf then flicked a switch and tapped a button.

“FIDO is in return to home mode,” she said.

“Well, that was exciting,” said Wolf.

“Life on a space station.”

& & &

A little later they watched FIDO track alongside the station and re-dock into the hull. Down in the dock, Hina watched the cylinders offload from FIDO one by one. The back end of FIDO hung over the clear plexiglass catchall. One by one, they emerged from the back and dropped into the shaft.

“How’s it looking?” Wolf said over the comm.

“Like he’s taking a shit.”

25 cylinders of dirt lay stacked neatly in the depot, each tagged with location data. Data. So much data. Soon, more data. Soil compositions, density, organic material breakdowns, non-organic materials, and on and on.

She detached the rack from the sub-structure and wheeled it to the lab sub-structure where one by one the cylinders would be pulled up via vacuum, like at a bank drive-thru, and stored in the labs units, where, one by one, they would be catalogued (more data), numbered (more data), weighed (more data) and examined (a lot of data). Then samples of the samples would be put through spectrum analysis, micro-analysis, and so forth. The dirt was then stored in long term storage containers, which were vacuum sealed, tagged, and eventually dropped into space outside Mars orbit.

Floating dirt.

The cylinders were dropped back into the dock for data wiping and cleaning for re-use.

She locked in the sample frame, punched up a display on the wall, and pressed a few buttons on the screen. One by one, the cylinders were set and shot up the tube and disappeared. She watched each one until the unit beeped.

She unlocked the rack and returned it to FIDO. The next haul would be much larger. Two FIDOs working, multiple racks.

Very procedural.

Now she would sleep for two hours.

& & &

The beeping alarm woke Hina in her rack. She stood and pulled herself into the tube to Command. She found Wolf snoozing in his chair.

“Hey.”

“What?” Wolf sat up.

“Lively shift, eh?”

“Sure, yeah.”

Hina sat and strapped in and pulled up the rover data. Rover 1 was offline for the storm. She checked Rovers 3 & 4.

“3 & 4 are full, and stopped. Let’s bring them up.”

“Bringing up 3 and 4.” Wolf tapped the sequence.

Somewhere on Mars Rover 3 secured and stabilized itself, then launched 50 samples into space.

“First samples on their way up. Let’s launch FIDO 1 now.”

“Launching FIDO 1,” Wolf tapped a button, “Now.” FIDO 1 popped out of the side of Sirius Station. Searched, found a beacon, and moved, ready to pickup the samples.

“FIDO 1 on its way.”

“Thank you,” said Hina. “So far, so good. So, routine.”

“Yeah.”

“When will we be close to Rover 4?”

“15 Minutes.”

“Fine. Prepare to send them up then launch FIDO 2.”

“Roger dodger. Pushing buttons.”

“Report if there’s a SNAFU. I’m going to the lab to start the sample processing.”

“Super. Aye, aye.”

“Smart ass.”

Hina unbuckled and launched herself down the tube to ladder 4, then up to the lab. She checked the sample pods. There they were, all in pretty rows, like a stainless steel Saturn missile launcher. She put on her PPT and pulled sample 1, starting the routine.

She scanned the code, and the machines whirred to life. Screens displayed all the data Rover and FIDO had uploaded in the data stream. She broke the seal then placed the container in the pit. She scooped a teaspoon at a time in little sample trays. Big chunks were separated and weighed. All precise. By the end, nearly 2GB of data per sample would be sent back to Houston on Earth in radio bursts. Each tray analyzed and recorded. Chemical compounds, weight, radiation level, H20 content (also 0), so on and so on. By the time the expedition was complete, they would know exactly where they picked up 10mg of Zinc Phorite compared to an area with only 2mg.

And why?

“Stratton?” Hina jumped and spilled a portion of the sample on the table.

“Bitch!” she yelled. She pressed a button. “What?”

“FIDO 1 has picked up all samples and will be docking on our return.”

“Thanks. And FIDO 2?”

“Still out. Everything ok?”

“Sure. Hina out.”

There was a procedure for this event as well. She pulled a static free microfiber brush and swiped the sample into a tray on the side of the table. She pulled the tray, and returned the spilled sample to the container, then disposed of the brush.

She poured the content of one sample onto a specialized glass slide, then slid it under the microscope. She peered in.

“Ok, let’s see. Yep, Martian dirt.” She zoomed in. “And, dirt.” She slid the glass out, made some notes, crystalline structures, quartz, etc, and then placed the glass into the spectrum analyzer and started the process.

She pulled another slide, poured the sample on it, and picked up the glass slide, slicing her finger on the edge.

“Dammit!”

She dropped the slide and sample in the tray, blood dripped everywhere. She instinctively went to put her finger in her mouth and caught herself. She hurried to the first aid kit. She recalled the last time this happened in her lab at the University. But that one didn’t slice through both the latex and flesh.

“Fuck, that hurts.”

She washed the wound and dressed it and slapped on another glove. She returned to the sample tray. Blood and Martian dirt mingled together in the bottom.

“Swell.”

She had never lost a sample. Not like this. This one would have to be scrapped and she’d have to record it. She carefully picked up one of the glass slide and was moving to dispose of it when something in the blood covered dirt caught her eye. She looked closer, gasped, then placed some of the dirt on a new slide and put it under the microscope.

Movement.

Life? She thought. How is that possible?

Like a tiny tape worm, swimming in a sea of red dirt. A semi-microscopic organism moving enough to catch her — it grew. Right there while she watched.

& & &

She hit the comm button.

“Wolf, get down here!”

It grew again. The pool of blood shrank as it did. The clank of something on metal and boots on the floor announced Wolf’s entry.

“What is it?”

“Watch.” Wolf stared at the display on the wall.

“Is that blood?”

“It is. I cut myself.”

It grew, and the blood pool shrank again. “Holy– what the–?” He stepped up for a closer look. “That thing just grew!”

“I know. It’s done that four times. Doubles each time.” Wolf peered into the sample area and the slide.

“Um, you might want to check your slide,” Wolf said.

Hina stepped back. The thin worm was dangling off the edges.

“It’s not doubling. It’s more than that.”

“I’m not seeing any more blood.”

“Yeah. I think it’s consuming my blood and growing from it”

It grew again.

“Whoa,” Wolf said.

He picked up a plastic container and handed it to Hina.

“Good idea.”

She grabbed the tweezers from the back of the table, picked up the thing which had sprouted multiple directions and placed it in the plastic container. She screwed on the lid, then sealed it with tap.

“If it gets much bigger, send it outside,” Wolf said.

“Yeah. Not sure what to think.”

“Tell me what happened.”

Hina explained the accident.

“Ok. You contaminated a sample with your blood. And then… this.” He pointed to the container.

“Yes. I want to run some tests on one of the other samples. Stuff we don’t normally test for, specifically nucleotides.”

“I see your theory. I think.”

“Blood is biologic. That soil, at least the samples usually are, dead dirt. Crystalline and covered in radioactive waste.”

“Yeah? But you think there is DNA there.”

“Technically no. Maybe pieces of DNA. I’m not sure, it doesn’t make sense. What I know is when the biologic, my blood, mixed with the dirt, that happened,” she said, pointing to the creature in the jar.

“You hear yourself, right? Maybe that sample you ruined had the parasite, maybe you contaminated the only sample of Martian dirt that contained life.” Hina grinned.

“Thanks for the support.”

“My suggestion. Get another sample, run the normal tests, then test your theory integrating the blood or some other biologic.”

“Sound, for a fly guy.”

“Do, um, we need to wake Dr. Smith?”

“No. Not yet. When is their scheduled wake time?”

“8 days for Smith and Dickenson.”

“Our relief.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll run your theory. Fido 1 and 2 back and pooped?”

“Yes.”

“Ok. I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”

Wolf left and Hina grabbed another sample and ran it through the motions. Dirt. Same as the others. She looked at the creature in the plastic jar. It hadn’t grown again since they placed it in the container. It was motionless. She put a small bit of the dirt sample on a slide and started the process to check for nucleotides or other non-crystalline structures, then went to the galley for coffee.

& & &

The coffee machine dinged, and she poured a cup, letting the warm engineered slop roll down her throat. They had almost got it right.

“Good enough,” she said.

She drank the cup in silence, then worked her way back to the labs. As she pulled herself in, the analyzer dinged a little computerized ding. A report flipped up on the screen.

“Holy shit.” She pressed the comm button.

“Wolf? Need your help.”

“Coming,” he called from the tunnel. He rose a moment later and stepped into the lab “Smelled the coffee. Figured you’d be headed back. What’s up?”

“Look at this?” She pointed to the screen.

“I see, but I don’t understand.”

“Right. These lines, they are, particles, say, structures of a possible incomplete strand because it’s missing certain bases.”

“Oh. That totally makes sense.” He looked at her. She sighed.

“Think of it as a broken helix.”

“Ok? And you found these in the dirt?”

“Yes. I think, and this is only a theory, is that my blood, well, the missing bases came from my blood–“

“Completing the helix?”

“Yes. And then…” She pointed to the plastic container.

“I heard in 9^th grade biology, that the only thing that separates us from a tree is the DNA sequence. All life has DNA,” Wolf said.

“Not bad for a fly boy. Your teacher was very smart.”

“My teacher was my mother. The worst year of my life.”

Hina laughed.

“That is correct. We share common DNA with trees, to use your analogy, and the sequencing plays a big part of it. But, until now, that applied to Earth bound life.”

“Well, our DNA had to come from somewhere. It’s the whole chicken egg theory, right? Where did the first strand of DNA come from?”

“Valid. But now we’re talking about using human DNA to mix with Martian DNA and not knowing the correct sequence. Hence our little friend here, the blob.”

Wolf picked up the plastic container.

“Yeah. This is going to be the rubber seal on your dissertation, maybe something bigger.” He put the container down and the small worm-like creature squirmed. “So what’s next?”

“Good question. For now, I’ll add this test to the sequence, and we start looking at the deep core samples.”

“And we don’t need to wake anyone? This is huge.”

“I’ll leave that up to CentCom.”

“Well played.”

“When will we be back in transmission range?”

Wolf looked at his watch.

“Right now, actually.”

Hina stood and went to her console in the lab and started typing on the keys and, with a final crack on the keyboard, sent the message.

“Done.” She scratched her dirty blonde hair. “I’m headed to the dock. I want to get some of the deep core samples.”

“I’ll help.”

The two of them floated along the corridor to the dock and loaded six of the deep core samples from Rover 3. A beep came from a console next to them.

“Hmm. Looks like Rover 1 is back online. Crank him up?”

“Do a system check first. I want clean samples.” Wolf laughed at the irony.

“Clean dirt samples. Good one.”

He tapped a few points on the console and followed Hina out of the dock.

& & &

She scooped a small sample onto a slide and put it under the scope while another sample was being analyzed.

“Darker crystalline structures. It’s really quite amazing up close.”

“It’s dirt.”

“I know it’s dirt. The composition of the deep samples is slightly different. Not much.”

The console beeped.

“Got incoming.” Hina walked to the console and tapped a button. “Let’s see. Keep testing, extraordinary find, work on deep core.”

“Ha! You’re way ahead of them.”

“And wake Commander Dickenson. And CMO Murray.” She sighed. “Great.”

“Murray? Why not Dr. Smith?” Hina shrugged. “Ok then,” Wolf said.

He set the Rubik’s cube he was toying with down on a table and stood.

“Hold on. Blah, blah. Ok. Not much else. Follow standard protocols and procedures.”

“I’ll go wake the Cap and Doc.”

“Fine, fine.” Hina sighed.

She knew her time on the project was limited. She would get bowled over by protocol and experience by the two most senior members on the station. Murray tended to ramble like an old M.D., because he was old, compared to the ages of everyone else on board.

The analyzer chimed. She tapped a few buttons.

“Hold it. Just a sec.” Wolf turned and saw the display.

“Wow.” Hina looked up.

“Oh, my. That’s something new.”

“Does that mean DNA here too?”

“Yes, but much more complex. Twice as many nucleotides as the other, and three times more than human.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Dunno. Right now it’s just… interesting.”

She tapped some more buttons.

“Go wake the Cap now?”

“Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. I have a little time to finish before she comes in and takes over.”

“She’s not a scientist.”

“Her chum Murray is though.”

“Not as good as you Stratton.”

“Thanks Nick.” She sipped the last bit of cold coffee and placed the cup on the table.

Wolf floated down the long tube to the graveyard. He pulled himself in, flipped on the magnets in his boots, and stuck to the metal grate floor. He walked over to the HAB units. The only real purpose for the hibernation on this short trip was sanity. Cap started the first leg and got them here, then let the science squad and pilot take over. It was like a fire watch, only with 6 month long drug induced sleep sessions in-between.

Wolf walked to Hab 1 where Commander Brie Anderson lay. She seemed peaceful, but she was a real bitch sometimes. Wolf pressed a button on the side panel and a chime sounded near her coffin. She’d be up in 15 minutes. He walked to Murray’s coffin. Pressed a button and the chime sounded. He looked at the stoic face of the imposting black man. If Murray could have, he’d have flown for the Navy, commanded a Marine Recon unit, and been a test pilot, all at the same time. Instead he was an ER doc and Chief Biologist with a major university, and now an astronaut. The man was impressive, and overbearing.

Commander Dickenson’s coffin opened emitting a hiss. The process was a painfully slow one. Acclimation, orientation, SSRI signals, drugs, the works, all staged to gently wake the dead. When in stasis the heart beat was so low it was barely perceptible. Wolf and many others called it one beat away from death. Oxygen through the blood, pressure, all monitored by ports from implanted biotech hardware connected to the coffin. It took serious guts to knowingly, let a machine keep you alive. Wolf hated it, most did, but that was factored in so the first dose was a slight hit of fentanyl, and two seconds later, you didn’t give a shit. Then sleep. Then, hopefully, wake.

CMO Murray’s coffin opened and Wolf jumped out of his deep thought. Heart rates and oxygen would be increasing, oxygen passed over the nose and taken in naturally. Wolf looked at his watch. In about 3 minutes Dickenson’s eyes would pop open then try to acclimate herself to her surroundings. To her it probably felt like she just went to sleep. She’d been dead 3 weeks. Once Sirius was online and the Rovers deployed, she was out. Wolf and Hina went through this when Murray woke them up three weeks ago.

A gasp of breath. She was awake. Wolf walked to her coffin.

“Good morning from Mars, Commander.”

She nodded. Another few minutes and she’d be talking.

A gasp from CMO Murray.

A whimper.

“Why. Awake.”

“I’ll brief you shortly. For now, CentCom’s orders. We found something.” She nodded. Wolf walked to CMO Murray’s coffin. He was looking around.

“Wakey, wakey, hands off snakey.”

Murray flipped Wolf the bird. Dickenson sat up and unhitched herself from the pod. She groaned. Wolf handed her water and throat and nose spray.

“Lube it up.” She shook her head. Dickenson sprayed the throat and nose spray, then drank some water.

“Coffee?”

“Whoa, eat something first, yeah? We’ll chat in the galley.”

A few minutes later when the waking dead were mobile, they floated the corridor to the galley, and prepped some food.

“So, tell me what’s going on,” Dickenson said.

“CentCom ordered us to wake you. Hina found something quite extraordinary. Partial DNA in the soil. And, we have a life form of sorts.”

“What?”

“Impossible,” CMO Murray said.

“True Doc.”

“I need to see this.”

“No, first you follow protocol. It’s my job to make sure you do and I’m in command until you do.”

“Right. Where’s Hina?”

“Lab. She’s running some deep core samples through, checking for nucleotides and other things. I don’t know. Science shit.”

“Right. Ok.”

“Anything else, ship ok?” Dickenson said.

“Smooth as silk. Just had a dust storm and had to hibernate Rover 1, other than that, routine and uneventful.”

“Fun times.”

“Living the dream,” Wolf said.

“Good to know.”

They finished eating and consuming the protein and vitamin mixture required after long sleep and floated the tube to the lab. Wolf entered. Hina was lying on the floor with a small pool of blood near her head.

“What?” He ran to her. “Oh, shit.”

Commander Dickenson and Murray followed.

& & &

Hina’s left eye had burst, her nose was bleeding, and she had a gash across a cheek.

“What the hell?”

Murray grabbed a first aid kit and knelt beside her and looked her over. He began his triage and treatment, his E.R. muscle memory taking over.

“She’s lost her left eye. I’ll have to remove it. Nasal cavity looks ruptured, like a broken nose at the bridge. Probably from the orbital fracture she sustained.” Wolf checked her pulse and heart rate while Murray worked on her.

“She’s unconscious, no concussion. The eye took most of the blow,” Murray said.

“From what?” Wolf said, staring at him.

“From this,” said Dickenson. They approached the lab table. The microscope was shattered. Something had shot from the slide through the eyepiece.

“And look at this.” Dickenson showed the slide. On it was some dirt from the sample and mixed into it… blood.

“She mixed in her own blood,” Murray said.

“Looks that way,” Dickenson said.

“But why?”

Wolf held up the plastic sample container.

“This. This is how she discovered it. She cut herself on a slide, saw the blood mix with the dirt sample, and this thing, in here, started growing from it.”

“And she wanted to replicate it?” Dickenson said.

“Appears so,” Wolf said. Murray took the sample from Wolf and examined it.

“Ok. So where’s the lifeform?”

They all stepped from the table and started searching the area.

“I’ve seen this in a movie doc. It didn’t end well.” He mocked at a laugh.

“I’m not seeing anything.”

“Well,” Wolf said. “Depending on how much blood it was exposed to or had access to determined its growth. That thing there,” he said pointing to the sample. “It stopped when it ran out of blood.”

“So you’re saying, if its supply was low, then it could be very small.” Dickenson said.

“Something like that.”

“Even microscopic.” Murray added.

“I don’t think anything microscopic made that hole in her face doc,” said Wolf.

“And if it had access to a fair amount of blood,” Dickenson added.

“Well, hard to say, but if that specimen only grew that big, I would say it’d keep growing until…”

Hina moaned, and they all rushed to her side.

“Hina?” Wolf said. “Cap and Doc are here.”

Hina moaned again.

“What is it you need, Hina?” Doc said.

“Wa-Water,” she said.

Wolf grabbed a nearby decanter and filled it with water from the lab tap and touched it to her lips. She drank from it, then coughed.

“The specimen.”

“We can’t find it Hina. It must–“

“Specimen… inside.”

Wolf looked at Commander Dickenson.

“Inside what Hina?”

“Inside… me,” she said then collapsed. Wolf stepped back.

“Did she just say inside her?”

“She did,” said Murray.

“No bueno Doc. The thing feeds from the supply of blood to grow. And it has a massive supply of blood. That thing must be–“

Hina’s head turned back and forth as if some madman was trying to rip it off. She arched her back.

“She’s convulsing,” said Murray. “Get her arms.” Doc Murray and Commander Dickenson held Hina down. Her head snapped to one side with an eerie crack, then the head jumped, and cracked like a hatching bird.

“Oh Jesus!” said Wolf as he stepped back to the tube ready to float out.

The head cracked again then split open and a black ooze started to cover the floor. Her chest started to expand like a balloon and Murray and Dickenson let her go and stepped away.

Then everything stopped. No more convulsions. The black ooze spread like molasses.

“What, in the ever-loving–“

“Can it, Wolf,” said Doc Murray. He wiped sweat from his brow. Hina’s chest stretched again, her belly looked pregnant.

Her foot twitched, and everyone jumped back.

A strange cracking noise came from her chest as one by one ribs were cracking, then at once, her chest exploded sending black goop and blood into the air, covering the lab. The goo ran on the floor, stopped, then came back together, coalescing into one sentient pool of black before writhing. One of her legs bent out sideways and twisted back, snapping at the knee, then folded in on itself, snapping the femur. Wolf threw up into a nearby canister. Commander Dickenson hid her eyes and groaned. Doc Murray watched in fascination, as the other leg twitched, snapped, and folded. He looked down at himself just now noticing he was covered in Hina’s blood and some of the black stuff was running across his body and pooling on the front of his chest. Then he screamed as the goo changed into a solid and slammed into him like a sledgehammer, then ripped open his chest cavity. Murray’s lungs, heart, and intestines, fell out, and dangled from the cavity, before he collapsed forward onto the irascible mess. The blood pool slopped up by the black muck as it grew.

Wolf disappeared down the tube.

Dickenson screamed. She was also covered in the black mire, and like Doc Murray, was pulled apart at the gut. Blood spilled into pools on the floor and she collapsed. The black goo formed, and shaped itself, then pushed the bodies together with Hina’s remains, converging them onto a pile of flesh, body parts, and offal, and enveloping the grim spectacle with its form. The red blood turned black, and the thing grew into a tall towering, hulking figure reaching to the ceiling. Four arms spread out from the mess. Legs pushed out and it moved, and made a guttural howl.

& & &

Wolf closed the hatch to the command center behind him and locked it. He whimpered and cried, trying to pull up screens on the comms through the tears and his shaking hands.

“Fuck!” was all he managed to say. He tapped a button, and the screen changed.

“CentCom CentCom, mayday! Uh, 2, no 3 dead, under att—no, alien lifeforms, each, no. Being attacked. Dickenson, Murray, and Hina all dead. Please advise. Killed by unknown lifeform. Out.” He tapped the screen three times before managing to hit the button. The display said ‘message sent’.

He fished through the screens.

“Live comms, live comms, let’s see. Shit. 30 minutes before we hit the five minute window for live comms.” He whimpered and balled up in his command chair. “Shit, shit.”

He turned and vomited into a bin near the side of the chair. He wiped his mouth and stared out the window at the peaceful planet below.

Mars. The God of War. Peaceful. He started to laugh, then wiped sweat from his brow. He had no way to contain or control or kill even. He considered shutting down life support and turning the ship into a vacuum on all levels except the command deck.

“Screw it.”

He sat up and tapped some buttons on the control screen, then flipped off econ and life to the lab, galley, and the tubes.

The ship went dark.

& & &

The graveyard had their own life support systems and ran on battery in the event of a power failure. Oxygen came from the recycler under normal power and liquid oxygen under battery. 12 hours and they’d all be dead. That thing, whatever it was, should be a corpse in that time. He tapped the graveyard and engineering and turned the power off.

He flipped through some screens and saw the graveyard. The pods were all in night mode with emergency power lighting, flashing, on battery notice. Only two remained nocturnal, Harris and Smith.

He flipped video to the lab. The three bodies were… gone. Only a few remnants of the blood bath, along with some unidentifiable parts, remained. He checked the galley. Empty. The dock.  Nothing. Engineering. Nothing..

“Shit. Where…” The camera display for Tube 1 came on and there it was, floating just outside the command door.

“No,” a shiver ran up Wolf’s spine and he winced. The thing moved and stretched out along the length of the tube.

“Not today…”

Wolf reached over to the other control panel, flipped a couple of screens, tapped a button and a hiss flowed through the ship. He was venting oxygen through the thruster section.

A beeping. He tapped the Master Caution. They had accelerated a notch, nothing to worry about. The hissing slowed, and he tapped the forward thrusters and the ship dropped into the correct speed range.

“Ok fucker,” he said. “Suck on this.”

He tapped a button. Outside the ship the door to hatch 3-A opened. On the other side, the door to hatch 4-B opened. He tapped a third button, and the airlocks opened to the now equalized ship. The entire ship was now a gravity-less vacuum outside the door to the cockpit. The thing started to writhe, and spin, sputter. He could hear a faint tapping on the locked seal of the compartment as the thing banged against it trying to breathe.

“Die…” Wolf murmured.

The thing wriggled and squirmed and then… went still, and floated in the vacuum that Wolf created. Looking at the monitor, he estimated the thing had grown to 25-foot long, stretching nearly the entire length of the corridor. He dropped back into his pilot’s chair.

A beeping came from the console, an incoming message from CentCom. He tapped it.

“Sirius Station, good work on the find. We hope you have followed protocol and Murray and Dick are up. We await your important news and any other info on your find.”

“Jackasses. Checking up on us to see if we followed orders.”

He tapped reply.

“CentCom, Sirius Lab. Hina, Dick, Murray dead. Sirius in vacuum. The Lone Wolf.” He hit send and chuckled. Lone Wolf. A Master Caution light flashed on the console and started beeping. He read the message.

Sleep ISO Alert. Preventive seal breech, HAB Unit 4

“The graveyard?”

He flipped to the video of the graveyard. The interior light was on Unit Beta 4, Harris. He pulled up vitals, all normal. Without seal though Harry would go through an abnormal wake up and suffer roughly two dozen strokes before the vitals shut down. The brain synapses would be cut loose. The light within the lab unit blinked.

“What the?” Wolf watched. It blinked again, but it wasn’t a blink. It was more like a shadow passing in front of light.

Shit. Wolf thought.

He checked the monitor outside the door. The thing was still floating there in the 0 G vacuum.

“Dammit.”

He locked down the airlocks and restarted Econ. He could hear the whistle of air calibrating and pressurizing the vacuum he created.

A green light blinked on in all compartments displayed on the ship wide panel.

Oxygen and pressure.

He pushed himself out of the chair and went to the hatch. He opened it. The Martian loomed there. Black and green. Shiny. Limbs protruding every which way. A body designed in chaos. Extensions that looked like arms or legs. No face or discernible head.

He winced, reached out, and pushed it. It floated backwards down the tube. He heaved a sigh and pushed past it and down to the graveyard. An audible beeping was coming from the room. He pulled himself into the graveyard and locked to the floor. He ran to Hab 4. Harris. He checked the seal. The compartment had been opened somehow. A broken latch mechanism from the depressurization? He pushed down on the unit and the seal engaged. He let go, and it started beeping again.

“Shit.”

The units were on a timed release once the sequence was engaged. And the sequence engaged once the pod seal was broken. He couldn’t stop it now. He switched on the flow of drugs to wake Harris. Time was short. The release locks unlocked, and the capsule slowly swung open.

Out of time he thought.

Harris would be a vegetable soon unless the kickstarter drugs engaged. Harris’s eyes sprung open. Wolf pulled one of the two breathing assist tubes, then Harris gasped. His eyes darted to Wolf, and he began to seize.

“Shit!”

Wolf adjusted the meds, and the seizure subsided. Wolf was panting. His mind racing. He hunched over to catch his breath. He was killing Harris, and he knew it.

“Wolf,” a raspy half-dead voice said. Wolf saw Harris looking at him.

“I’m sorry man,” he said.

Harris’s eyes rolled back and forth. The last sequence started and announced itself with three beeps. Harris reached out and grabbed the sides of the pod then started to scream as new meds kicked in and stimulated every muscle group. You weren’t supposed to be awake for this, and this was why. The pain was like having half a million acupuncture needles jabbed into your muscles and inch deep all at once, over and over. But if Wolf hadn’t woke Harris to engage his cognitive reflex and alertness, he’d be dead.

Right now he only wished he was.

Harris relaxed, then passed out, sweat dripping from him. He pressed a button on the pod console and the pod raised to a standing position.

Harris slumped in the restraints, briefly then floated. Benefits of low G environment.

Wolf kicked up the med display. Everything looked normal. BP, oxygen, pulse. He sighed, then saw movement from Harris out of the corner of his eye. Harris hadn’t moved. Something moved on him.

& & &

Wolf jumped back.

“No, no, no. Christ on a cracker”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. He opened one, then the other, then leaned in, and took a closer look. There, wrapped around Harris neck was the creature from the sample container.

“Oh God!”

Wolf ran to the med drawer, grabbed a pair of tongs, and ran back to Harris. Using the tongs he grabbed the thing around Harris’s neck.

This was it alright. The thing writhed and twitched.

“Well, a nasty death awaits you partner.”

He grabbed a med sample bag and put the thing inside. He walked over to a bio drop, and dropped it in, sealed the port, and hit the button. A microwave blast followed by an intense heat would kill and vaporize whatever it was.

“Martian BBQ.”

He plopped down on a chair and began to sob. He knew he’d have to wake Smith too and that gargantuan thing was still in the tube outside comms.

“That,” he said. “Is going out the airlock.”

He stood, then heard a thump. He looked to Harris who was still passed out.

Another thump, like something banging against a wall. Probably that behemoth flopping around in zero G. It was going to be fun explaining all this to Harris, assuming he regained consciousness.

Wolf left the graveyard and floated down the tube to the ladder to go to command. He grabbed the ladder and prepared himself for the hard look up the tube at the beast. A couple of deep breaths. He looked up and saw the hatchway to Command at the end of the tube.

“Shhiiiit.”

He turned and pushed off back to the graveyard, entered, and sealed the hatch. The same four-letter word echoed in his mind over and over and over.

A thump.

How the hell was that thing alive? He put it in a vacuum!

A groan.

Harris.

Wolf walked to Harris’s pod. His eyes were open. They darted to Wolf. A raspy whisper escaped his body.

“Wolf. What– the fu…”

“Hatch lock failed. I had no choice. You’re lucky to be alive.” Wolf thought about this. “I think.” Harris frowned. “Long story.” He checked Harris’ vitals screen. “Ready for the last kick to get you out of there?”

This was going to be brutal, but not as bad as the last one. Harris raised his arm like it weighed 100 pounds and flipped off Wolf.

“Yeah. Second time today somebody’s done that. Hold on to your shit.”

He tapped a couple of buttons on the screen and Harris jerked and tightened up, gritting his teeth.

“Potassium and adrenaline are in 10 seconds.”

The console beeped and Harris dropped like a sack of rocks in the restraints. He was breathing hard and heavy. Vitals were elevated, but within range, especially after that shot of nitro.

Another thump brought Wolf back to reality. He turned to the hatch. He keyed in a few things on the touch pad and the video monitors appears on the screen. He tapped through them until he found it, floating outside of engineering. His console beeped. A message from system. Fido 3 was down, unknown cause.

“Swell.”

The console beeped again.

Fido 4, fail, system error unknown.

“What the crap?”

He checked the video feed. It was still outside engineering.

A beep.

Fido 1 offline, no response.

“What the ever loving–“

This was a science and research vessel. The only weapons was a knife in the galley and CO2 cartridges for launching FIDOs. Nothing they could use to kill this thing. He can’t create a vacuum from here, not that it worked anyway.

Beep.

Fido 2 off course, re-calibrating. Override. Fido 2 off course.

“What?”

He pulled up Fido 2’s location. It was heading towards the mountain range, to a line of cliff sides and canyons, about 15 kilometers away from its position.  He watched its trajectory.

Curious.

“Wolf,” a half-dead raspy voice said. Wolf nearly jumped out of his boots. He looked at Harris. “Unlock me.”

Wolf unlocked Harris from the harness and he fell to the floor in a low G sort of way. Harris stayed there, on all four’s, panting.

“You ok Harris?” Wolf said. Harris glanced up at him over his shoulder.

“Yeah. Hard time breathing. Not sure why.”

Wolf reached down and helped Harris stand. Harris looked around then saw the screen. He squinted.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Hina’s pet project.”

“What?”

Wolf filled him in while Harris sat on a stool and listened.

“Jesus. Dead?”

“Yes.”

“And that?”

“Yes.”

Wolf couldn’t bring himself to tell Harris why he was awake, and what he pulled off his neck.

“Currently it has shut down 3 FIDOs and is driving another to the cliff wall here.”

“Strange.”

“Goes without saying. You’re the geologist doc, what’s so special about here?”

“Nothing I can think of off the top of my head. But…” Harris thought for a second. “Pull up a spectral sub-surface image.”

“A what?”

“Here.”

Harris nudged Wolf out of the way and tapped a few buttons. The image changed to a blue tinted shot.

“Whoa,” Harris said.

“What am I looking at?”

“These lines. Those are not reflecting. They’re caves.”

“Caves?” Wolf stepped back. “Shouldn’t we already know about this?”

“Not really. It’s part of why we’re here, and why I’m here.”

“Of course.”

“We got anything to eat in here?”

“No. But you need to finish the process anyhoo. We can make our way to the galley and seal it off. The thing is down by engineering.”

“Then let’s go.”

Wolf checked the cameras one last time. Whatever it was doing, it was still doing it by engineering. Wolf opened the hatch and the two of them floated down the corridor to the ladders, then down to the galley. He sealed the hatch.

& & &

Harris meandered to the food.

“Nope. Gotta do the drink man.”

“Yes, mother.”

Wolf got the drink for Harris who nursed it down while Wolf pulled up the display.

“Still there.” The consoled beeped. “Message from CentCom. This should be good.”

He clicked on the message icon.

“What? You report Murray and Hina and Dickinson deceased and some sort of creature loose. Is this a joke?”

He shook his head. Thanks for the help, he thought.

He tapped reply.

“No joke. Harris up. 3 FIDOS down, 1 off course. Send more cops!” He hit send.

He sat down at the table with Harris who was still slurping down the drink.

“This stuff tastes like shit.”

“That it does.”

“I can’t believe Murray and Dick are dead.”

“And Hina.”

“Yeah. She was a smart kid.”

“Yeah, well, be thankful you didn’t have to watch it.”

“True.”

“I haven’t had much time to process it between you and trying to stay alive.” He glanced at the screen then at Harris. “Hadn’t planned on dying by Martian hands, Doc.”

“A’int that a trip.” Harris passed an empty drink to Wolf. “Can I have some real food now, mother?”

“What passes for real food?” Wolf grinned.

“Something hot.” Harris stood and went to the kitchen. Wolf checked the monitor. The thing was still at engineering. He checked Fido 2’s course. It was still heading for the cliffs.

“This is really strange,” Harris said. “So basically, the dirt contains incomplete DNA, a half or partial helix if you will.”

“Yes,” muttered Wolf.

“And human blood, completes the DNA sequence–“

“Not the sequence, but a DNA sequence. I mean, if we put tree sap or pig’s blood–“

“Right, a DNA sequence and poof out comes this thing?”

“Well, no. The discovery was small like a nightcrawler and stopped evolving once it ran out of blood to grow from.”

Harris dropped a fork or something in the sink.

“Say that again?”

“When it consumed all the blood, it stopped.”

“So, the amount of dirt doesn’t matter, it’s the amount of blood?”

“Yeah. I, I guess. What do I know? I just fly this bucket of nuts. But that’s what Hina thought.”

“Tell me what happened with Hina?”

“Not sure. Ingested some dirt somehow or testing it and it got out of control and she went down. The thing came from inside her, split her open like–“

“Yeah, don’t need the details Nick. Thanks.” He watched the monitor and munched on a bowl of something he cooked in the microwave, bland, and nameless.

“So that, is the sum of three human bodies?”

“I think so.”

“Interesting. It’s almost human. It looks, well, like a big congealed log of shit, but it has formed a head.”

“Apparently, fingers and hands also because it shutdown all the FIDO’s from that station except one.”

“So, intelligence.”

“Memory,” Wolf said.

“Memory?”

“Yeah, I’m assuming it can do what it’s doing because it’s what Murray did.”

“Interesting. Not bad for a fly boy.”

The things head rose its elongated neck, like a caterpillar standing, looking around. It turned to the camera pad. Harris turned away.

“Ack,” he spit out the food in his mouth.

“Shit,” said Wolf.

Harris looked up and saw the monitor was clear. No monster.

“Find it Wolf.”

Wolf flipped through the screens and saw nothing.

“I, I don’t know.” He flipped a few more. “It’s gone.”

“Nothing that size disappears.”

“Think it’s avoiding the cameras?”

“Hmm, maybe,” Harris said. “Plausible, if it is reacting from memory.”

Wolf continued to cycle through and found himself back at engineering.

“Nothing.” Wolf continued passing through screen after screen.

“Well it didn’t just disappear, as much as I’d wish that to be tru–“

“Wait.”

They both peered into the monitor.

“It’s in the graveyard. It’s behind Smith’s pod.” The thing lurched up and fell hard on the pod, with some sort of arms, smashing it open. Vapor rolled out and they could see Smith’s body start to convulse.

Wolf turned away.

“No, no, no, no! Not again!”

He screamed.

It reached in and grabbed Smith, lifted the body, tore into the side. Smith stopped convulsing, nearly torn in two.

Blood gushed out everywhere as if somebody had tipped a bucket of blood onto Smith’s pod. The mass floated in the low-G.

They both turned, Wolf retching, as Smith’s slipped out, his body limp. The thing convulsed as if it were drinking huge quantities of something, and it was. And it grew. The monitor beeped.

Wolf stood, retched, then tapped the button to turn off the horror show and view the message.

“Fido 2 is at the cliff,” he said as he continued to catch his breath, trying to focus on something new and clear the images from his head. “It’s… inside, the cliff. We’ve lost direct signal but are still receiving pieces from the sat.

The monitor beeped again.

“CentCom,” Wolf said, then turned to Harris. His head was lying on the table, like he laid down to sleep in class.

“Harris?”

Wolf walked over to him. Harris’s eyes were wide. He felt Harris’s neck.

“Shit dude. What the fuck?” Wolf threw Harris’s food across the room. “Why now?”

He sobbed, then dropped to the floor and curled up.

The monitor beeped again.

“Fuck you!” he said to no one through his knees. “Fuck! You!”

He laid there a moment, crying. He took a deep breath. He was alone now. No more bodies in the graveyard. The whole ship was a graveyard, and he was a lone ghost of a man. It was his ship now.

He stood, wiped tears from his face.

The monitor beeped again. He went to it and saw two messages from CentCom.

& & &

“Sirius, Centcom. Rec’d last. Sorry to hear about Hina, Murray, and Dickenson. Do your best working on solution. Harris and Smith will be valuable to assist. CentCom out.” He tapped reply.

“Harris dead. Smith dead. Eaten by thing. Thing much bigger. Everyone…dead. Lone Wolf out.”

He tapped the other email.

“Sirius, CentCom, send data and samples on organism. More cops coming.”

He hit reply.

“Ok, help is coming, just need to survive long enough. Probably from orbital launch, so a long time to wait. Even with the Parsons booster it would take a month. A month… Yeah, I’m pretty much dead.”

He flipped the screen back to the graveyard. The camera was black. Nothing. He cycled through the feeds.

Nothing. All black.

“Son of a bitch!”

He slumped onto a stool.

“I’m dead. I’m going to get eaten like a fat kid eats a Twinkie.”

The room shifted and tilted and Wolf floated slightly above the stool.

“Oh, no, no, no, no,” he said. He started pushing commands on the terminal. A screen popped up showing Sirius’s orbit and attitude. The orbit had declined two degrees, and the attitude was nose down ten degrees with twenty degrees left tilt.

“How the?”

He pulled up some more screens tapping, trying to correct pitch and attitude from the galley but he needed his command controls, and he had no idea where the beast was. More screens, more tapping. He found the flight controls and started to correct the attitude of the ship. Then was locked out. He tapped, nothing.

An error message displayed:

“Shit”

He pulled up the orbital controls. Command lockout enabled displayed across the screen.

“Centcom, Sirius, lost ship controls, nose down, left tilt. Gravity shift/reduction. Please correct.” He hit send.

They could send the command string which would correct the ship. A warning chime sounded and the red cabin warning lights lit.

“WARNING — ATMOSPHERE ENTRY IMMINENT” the voice said.

“We’re… crashing?”

They were right over Fido 2’s last coordinates.

He felt a lurch and went flying towards the pantry and hit the wall hard.

Warning klaxons were going off. He shook his head and pushed himself back to the console.

They were atmospheric.

The console beeped, incoming message. He opened it.

“Sirius, CentCom. Understood control loss. We have it from here. Godspeed Wolf, you are a hero in the eyes of the program.”

“What… the…” the comms went dark, the computer went black.

Wolf felt a sudden 60 plus degree temp rise, gravity was lost. Sirius was Mars bound.

“It has been 1 year since the crew of Sirius Space Research Station crashed into Mars. The ship had destabilized in orbit, and even with the heroic maneuvers of Lt. Commander Nick “Wolf” Birch, the ship could not be righted and was lost. Today we commemorate the one-year anniversary of this tragedy by laying this wreath here at the memorial in Arlington Cemetery. To our brothers and sisters lost in space, Godspeed.”

& & &

Sirius entered Mars’s atmosphere. The reactor was shut down and secured. It was officially noted the entire structure was destroyed in re-entry. But pieces rained down upon the red landscape most of the morning. The cargo bay unit fell and landed intact in an area recently patrolled by FIDO 2 before its disappearance from comms. Not far from the cliffs a life support pod landed within the debris from the graveyard. The active pod was labeled “N. Wolf.” Scribbled on the pod before the “N” were two letters: “Lo”. A lower case “e” was scribbled after the “N”. Inside, Wolf slept in a chemical nightmare.

A lifeform roughly the size of a small snake emerged from the wreckage and scurried toward the pod. The creature, the first living organism to move on mars in over a million years, chewed through the seal, and entered.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright A. E. Engle 2024

Editor’s Note: This story was a “silver finalist” for the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest in March 2023.