Chapter 39: Red Sand

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“How do you feel?” asked Matias, as they stood facing each other in the shuttle’s mostly empty cargo space, his voice echoing slightly inside her helmet.

“Excited. A bit scared. And much lighter,” said Kate.

Although her feet were planted firmly on the shuttle’s deck, her body had already registered the planet’s lower gravity.

“Be careful,” warned Matias, “you’ll need much less effort to move around than normal. Are you ready to step out?”

Kate nodded.

Matias pressed a button and slowly the rear wall of the shuttle swung slowly outwards and downwards to form the landing ramp, the pale red light of Mars penetrating slowly into the shuttle. They stepped forward to the upper end of the ramp.

“I’ll go down first,” said Matias. “I don’t want you to disappear into a sea of sand.”

He walked down the ramp and carefully placed one foot on the surface. Finding it firm, he stepped off the ramp altogether and walked a few paces. He turned to face her.

“Solid rock. Time to make history, Kate.”

Taking a deep breath, her heart thudding, she moved cautiously down the ramp and stepped off onto the Martian surface. She stood completely still, looking slowly round her. A red plain stretched away on both sides of the shuttle, in places covered by what looked like rolling red sand dunes, with mountain ranges on both sides and large rocky outcrops in between, like islands in a red sea.

“I feel like I just won Gold at the Olympics,” she said.

“In this gravity, you easily could,” replied Matias.

She started to walk towards him and quickly realised she was using too much effort as her body almost floated between steps. The sensation was thrilling, like having more physical power than she’d ever known. She stopped, placed her feet together and tried a light jump, giving a small squeal as she rose easily into the air until the boots of her suit were almost at head height, then settled slowly down again with the lightest of impacts.

“I see what you mean,” she said. 

“Shall we explore?” suggested Matias. “The suits’ oxygen supply is good for two hours, although I think we should limit ourselves to an hour.”

Her helmet’s speakers crackled with static and she heard - was it Teo’s voice? - speaking to Matias in English for her benefit.

“Don’t go too far from the shuttle,” he warned, “We’ve got clear location signals from your landing site and we can just about see you, too. How is it, Kate?”

“Wonderful. Just awesome,” she replied.

“Way to go, Kate” said a voice in the background sounding very like Amisha’s.

Matias pressed a control panel on the sleeve of his suit and slowly the shuttle’s hatch began to close.

“Let’s head for that outcrop over there,” he said, pointing towards a rocky outcrop that looked as if it was just 500 metres or so away.

They set off, walking slowly at first, but gradually lengthening their stride as they got used to the lighter gravity. Soon, they were travelling in long running jumps of over 20 metres, landing just long enough to push off again. Kate laughed with the sheer joy of it.

“I just broke the world long jump record by over 12 metres,” she said. Then, gradually slowing to a halt, she bent her legs and jumped into the air rising about four meters from the ground. “And there goes the high jump record,” she added.

“Not too high,” warned Matias, “the gravity may be less than half Earth’s, but you could still break a leg if you landed badly.”

They continued on their way. Even travelling as fast as they were, it still took almost ten minutes to reach the rock outcrop. It was shaped like a long wedge, about 200 metres long, rising from ground level at one end - where they were standing - to a height of nearly 150 metres at the other. Its surface, which had looked smooth from a distance, was craggy and broken, etched with deep fissures.

“Let’s see the view from the top,” said Matias.

They set off up the slope where the entire surface had been eroded into channels and gullies. 

“There was water here once,” said Matias, “you can see how it must have shaped the rock.”

They walked on, slower and more cautiously than they had on the plain, careful not to twist a foot in one of the many grooves in the rock. Not far from the top they paused to look around. The view was spectacular: red dunes rolling away into the distance in one direction, the rocky plain stretching back to where the shuttle rested in the other. It was beautiful, thought Kate, but also a little scary in its total lifelessness.

“Is there any way we can get a picture of me here?” she asked.

“I already have,” said Matias. “Both my helmet camera and yours are continually recording what we see and uploading to the ship.”

She looked across the rolling sand dunes.

“Are you getting this girls?” she said.

“We are, Kate,” came Laura’s voice over the helmet’s speakers. “It’s beyond words.”

Suddenly, a silvery disk rose over the far horizon, moving upwards and towards them.

“What’s that?” said Kate urgently.

Irvn’s voice came calmly back:

“Nothing to worry about, Kate. That’s Phobos, one of Mars moons, now rising in the West.”

“It moves so quickly,” said Kate.

“It does,” said Irvn. “It actually orbits Mars two-and-a-half times a day, so it travels pretty fast. It’s much closer to the planet than Earth’s moon and only a third of the size.”

As Kate watched it steadily approaching, what had first seen like a perfectly round disk, revealed itself to be a rough potato-shape of grey-white rock. It wouldn’t be long before it was overhead.

“Can you show us where the shuttle is?” came Gemma’s voice.

Kate turned away from the Moon to look back the way they’d come.

In the middle distance was the shuttle. Beyond it was the mountain range over which they’d flown as they searched for a landing place. Now something seemed to be moving around the mountain peaks, like a red mist.

“Matias, are those clouds?” she said.

Before Matias could answer, Irvn’s voice broke in urgently.

“Matias, Kate - that’s a sandstorm. It appears to be heading your way.”

Even as they watched, the red clouds, now visibly swirling, seemed to detach themselves from the mountains and move into the plain with surprising speed. 

“Quick,” said Matias, “we need to get back to the shuttle.”

“There’s not enough time,” came Irvn’s reply, unable to disguise a note of anxiety in his voice. “From the speed it’s moving I estimate it will reach you before you can reach the shuttle. You’d be stranded in the open.”

“Then we need to take shelter here until it passes over,” said Matias. “Come on Kate, we have to get down and behind this outcrop!”

Turning, they began to move as quickly as they dared back down the slope. Glancing to her left, Kate could see that the storm was now racing across the plain, rearing high into the air above the shuttle, which looked fragile and tiny by comparison.

© Adriana Nicolas 2014 

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