A cool breeze ran playfully along the tops of the grass
and caressed the sleeping travellers. Dutch was the first to wake at its touch
and stretched herself in the evening air. The light was softening as the sun
set behind the mountains. It was a massive orb of dark red now that nearly
filled the horizon, being twenty times the size of their sun at home. Dutch
looked around, slightly concerned. They had slept longer than she’d planned.
She had hoped to be back at the ship by now. The others began to wake in their
turn and yawn luxuriously, much rejuvenated from the deep sleep.
Dutch looked at the ship, just to make sure it was still
there.
“Time to go people. I don’t really want to find out what
type of creatures come out here at night,” said Dutch and watched with
satisfaction as everyone was suddenly galvanised into action: all except for
Righteous, who still stood as she had seen him last, unmoved and unmoving. She
feared he was going to be a big problem. Space crazies took a lot of looking
after. He was going to be a bigger problem when it came to organizing an
expedition to look for the distress beacon. He would have to stay behind and
someone would have to look after him, but she needed Officer Angelo to
accompany her, and she didn’t want to leave any of the women behind. Righteous
might seem helpless and placid now, but who knows what he’d be like when he wakes
up. She could sedate him in the ship’s sick bay and put him on a drip feed, but
that would only give them a week or so, and they couldn’t get very far in that
amount of time. Anyway, she’d have to cross that bridge later. Right now, they
had to get him back to the ship.
“Okay Ladies. Let’s be up and at ‘em.”
They all began gathering up the plates and rugs and
packing them into the holdalls.
“I can’t find my hat,” said Sweet Mary anxiously. She
always panicked when she couldn’t find her things. And she could never find her
things.
“Well, where have you been?” asked Dutch patiently. “Have
you tried over there by the pool?”
Sweet Mary scurried off to look for her beloved hat and
Dutch contemplated Righteous, trying to work out what to do with him if he
wouldn’t come along willingly. He was too big to manhandle.
“OH!” came a high pitched squeal of surprise from Sweet
Mary and they all turned anxiously to look at her. She waved them over.
“Look here,” she said. They all hurried over and the sight
they saw stopped them dead in their tracks. The pool was absolutely empty. It was
even emptier than that. It was just a dry dustbowl of a depression in the landscape.
There weren’t even any water-plants or algae one would expect in a drained
pond. It was as if it had been dry for years.
“Where did it go?” asked Sweet Mary.
Automatically they all looked around for the missing water
as if it had got up and walked away somewhere. And then they noticed another
strange phenomenon. All the plants and flowers and grass had a slightly
transparent look about them, as if the vegetation was losing substance. In certain
places one could see right through them. They all stood, stunned, staring in
disbelief. The darkness was coming on quickly now and they watched as the
undergrowth became as thin as a ghost, wavering in the last of the sunlight.
All around them the red sands of a desert were replacing the lush vegetation
they had been picnicking in.
“What the hell…?” Dutch was the first person to pry loose
her tongue. She walked forward and tried to touch what remained of a bush but
her fingers passed right through it. Empty. There was nothing there. Slowly
their paradise was beginning to crumble, metaphorically and literally. The last
to go was the tree, disappearing slowly down to its stump.
“It’s just a mirage,” said Rose in amazed indignation.
“But we could feel it. And touch it. I mean we all felt it
didn’t we? And the water?” asked Sweet Mary.
A cold shiver ran down Dutch’s spine. Folk lore and classical
literature were full of these honey traps – the lotus eaters, sirens, chimeras
- luring the unsuspecting wayfarer to their doom with intoxicating visions and mirages.
Suddenly it all made sense to her.
“What we’ve been experiencing here,” she said, “is a
hallucination of sorts. I don’t know what caused it, but I suspect it has
something to do with the sun. This sun is an old red giant, a dying sun that,
in hindsight, obviously doesn’t have enough heat to sustain life on this
planet.”
“But what did we see then? Or feel?”
“It wasn’t real. Just a vision locked in the memory of the
land. Somehow, when the sun rises it raises the shades of a world long gone.
But that’s all it is; Just a vision. We’ve been in a dream world.” As she
spoke, Dutch could see vapour forming on her breath. It was beginning to get
cold. Very cold.
“We gotta go,” she said, “Before this gets any weirder.”
“What about Righteous?” said Sweet Mary.
“We’re going to have to push him and see if he walks. But
seriously, we have to go, now!”
Sweet Mary jumped at Dutch’s tone and rushed over to try
and get Righteous moving. Officer Angelo followed immediately to give her a
hand. Rose began collecting their things together and packing the holdalls.
The sun was nearly down and dark by now and the red desert
began to glow with an eerie phosphorescence.
“Must be some sort of bioluminescence in the soil….a
fungus of some sort,” murmured Dutch more to herself than anyone else as she scooped
up her bag and started to herd everyone along. In the distance, the ship shone
like a white beacon in the dull red glow of the desert sands, beckoning them
invitingly.
“He won’t move,” shouted Sweet Mary. She and Officer
Angelo were busy trying to wrestle Righteous into action but to no avail. Sweet
Mary could feel a delicious wave of terror rising in her, rising dangerously
close to her null-wave limit.
“Leave him. He’ll be alright. We’ll fetch him in the morning.
But we gotta go now sweetie,” said Dutch, softening her tone, realizing that
Sweet Mary would find it very hard to leave him behind. She was just built that
way.
That decision, however, was soon to be taken out of their
hands.
The noise, when they first heard it, was like the quiet
shushing of a sea-shell held to one’s ear; a mystifying but unthreatening sort
of noise. Then as it came closer, an ominous crackling and rumbling sort of sound
could be heard overlaying the susurration, hissing and bubbling in the cold night
air, the ground trembling underfoot. They stood like a group of goose-bumped
meerkats, turning their ears this way and that, trying to pinpoint the position
of the awful sound.
“There,” said Dutch pointing into the gloom.
In the gloom they saw a white wall of steaming ice nearly
a hundred feet high moving towards them at an alarming rate. From the dark side
of the planet, a blanket of glittering, gleaming white death enveloped the land
from horizon to horizon and slid across the sand, following the setting sun and
heading straight towards them. They all stood like rabbits caught in the
headlights, their minds numbed by the monstrous inevitability of it all. It was
moving so fast they hardly even had time to think. In horror they watched as it
crept up behind their ship, picked it up as if it was a plastic toy and swept
it along on the crest of the ice, hissing and cackling like an evil demon. Rose
stood like a stunned statue, unable to tear her eyes from the spectacle. This
was more than she was able to deal with; she simply gave up trying to do
anything and stood rooted to the spot - much like Righteous – mouth wide open,
not making a sound. Robbed of all volition, Rose stood frozen into her fear,
and as she faced the looming ice flow her son’s face stood out clear and clean
in front of her – a balm to the death that was only moments away.
“RUN!” shouted Dutch. “This way!” She pointed to the now
nearly invisible sun sinking beneath the mountains. “Just run. We can’t let
that thing catch us. We’ll all be as good as dead. RUN!”
Angelo took a last look at Righteous. The man was planted
in the ground as firmly and unmovable as a tree. His decision was easy to make.
“Come on,” he shouted to Sweet Mary. “There’s nothing we
can do for him.” Officer Angelo turned and almost ran into the pillar of salt that
was Rose, hand outstretched towards her beloved son’s face, tears of joy in her
eyes.
“Rose. Come on. Run with me. Rose!” But all she could
manage was a faint “Oh my” and her legs began to give way under her. “Dutch,
Help! Here!”
Even in the midst of the mayhem and panic, Officer Angelo
had time to notice the firm feel of the soft flesh round Rose’s waist as he grabbed
her and hoisted her up, and also how she fitted so snugly into his side. He
half carried her along on his hip but it was hard going. Rose was not a small
woman and she wasn’t giving him much help. Then Dutch was there, flinging
Rose’s arm over her shoulder and the two of them half hoisted and half dragged
her along.
“MARRIANNE! COME
ON! We gotta GO!” shouted Dutch over her shoulder as the three of them began to
hobble away. But Sweet Mary’s anxiety levels had already reached critical mass
and her null-wave transmitter had switched on, filling her with sweet abandon.
She was no more bothered by the terrible danger than she was a fly. She stood
placidly next to Righteous, looking back at Dutch with a beatific smile on her
face.
Dutch realized with horror what had happened, and that
screaming at her would only exacerbate the problem. She tried to keep the panic
out of her voice as she spoke. “It’s alright sweetie. Think of it as a game.
I’m going to run and I want you to try and catch me. Do you know that game?”
But Sweet Mary stood unmoved by it all.
The ice was slithering towards them like a living thing,
unstoppable, scything along the land in its nightly rotation around the planet.
“MARRRYYY!” shouted Dutch in desperation. She was torn
between helping Rose or running back to get Sweet Mary, but the ice was now
only metres away from Sweet Mary and Righteous and she knew that by the time
she got to her they would both be dead.
