Dire Planet

Chapter 9: Captive of the Sinthral

October 12, 2000, Mars

Arnold Stechter’s feet crunched on the gravel that scattered beneath his long steps as he left his four-wheeled dune buggy. In the sand-strewn Martian valley below he saw a glint of sunlight reflected by a shiny metallic object—something man made.

Stechter’s pinched and pale face shone through the faceplate of his oxygen suit. Beset by illness and lethargy, the long trip to the surface of Mars had not been kind to the once cocky astronaut. Still, his earthly muscles, weakened though they might be, responded marvelously under the lighter gravitational pull of the red planet, and he bounded down the sandy slopes—taking twenty feet in each stride.

At the bottom of the slope he paused and took a pull on a water tube inside the fishbowl helmet, and then he continued his walk. A few minutes later he stood by a sandy mound that protruded with odd angularity from the wind-rounded contours of the dunes around him. 

Stechter put out a gloved hand and brushed away the sand, revealing the scorched metal surface that was hidden beneath. In ten minutes he had cleared away enough debris to see the blackened inscription on the side of the ruined spacecraft—Mars Climate Orbiter.

A speaker in his helmet crackled, relayed from his landing vehicle, which was in turn relayed from Cape Canaveral Florida by a space antenna in Canberra, Australia. It was the squeaky voice of Allen Rigby at NASA Control.

“Has your search turned up anything?”

“Negative,” answered Stechter. “I’ve gone over the projected landing sites with a fine tooth comb. I can safely say that there is nothing within a hundred mile radius.” 

Rigby unwrapped a sandwich; Stechter heard the crackling of the wrapper on another planet. “What was that? I may be getting some interference.”

“That’s me about to bite into a Meat Lover’s Submarine sandwich,” answered Rigby. “Well, if your search hasn’t turned anything up, I guess that means that the Orbiter either burned up or had a fuel leak and exploded while going into orbit.”

“The metal detectors show absolutely nothing.”

“I guess congratulations are in order, Arnold. You’re the first man to ever set foot on Mars.”

Stechter smiled thinly. “I guess I am.”

Mars, 47,000 B.C.

As the slavering horde of Galbrans rushed in her direction Ntashia slipped on the torn wings, which Garvey had thrown to her. She took three steps out from her granite-bound refuge and flapped the wings, launching herself over the heads of the angry cannibals.

A dozen winged Galbrans excitedly swooped toward her, anxious to see that their prey did not escape. They had the advantage of altitude, but she knew that if she could get across the ledge and out over the Rift that their advantage would be somewhat less. She would considerably open up the space in which she could maneuver.

These thoughts only flashed through her mind; a mind that was focused only on Garvey Dire. She had seen the astronaut go down beneath a wave of Galbran, and now as she glided overhead she watched them rend and tear with their teeth at a downed form clad in the protective skin of a thick NASA space suit.

Ntashia did not have enough speed to effectively use the razors imbedded in the ridges of the wings she wore, and she knew that swooping down to slash at Garvey’s tormentors would result only in a crash, and her death. Still, she could not bring herself to abandon the man by whose side she had fought. It was anathema for the women warriors of the Muvari tribe to abandon a male to the enemy, but Ntashia felt additional emotions stirring within her for the stranger.