difficult to think.
Soon, she thought and struggled on, they’ll be here soon. Maybe they’re already here.
When she finally reached the capsule, she collapsed inside as the airlock closed, and lay there for a while with her flushed, wind-burned face resting on the floor, listening to the wind howling through the holes and cracks inside her, just as it had howled through the cliffs.
There was nobody there. Nobody had come for her.
She took two pills before sitting down at the work-desk. It was difficult to get the boot off because of the swelling, and the searing reddish blue bruise had spread halfway up her calf and shin. Carefully, she wrapped her ankle with a cooling bandage and felt the throbbing subside. She pulled up the diagrams and graphs on-screen, all the data she had previously collected from the test sites, and she sat there staring at the screen, trying to make sense of it all. It was so difficult to concentrate, so difficult to see, as if the sparkling sand and sunlight were still in her eyes. The report was incomplete, but maybe it would still be enough for a terra-forming license. It would have looked better with the info from the probe, but it was too late to do anything about that.
I can’t do it all by myself, she thought angrily. They’ll understand that. They have to understand that.
She felt her lacerated forehead and saw blood on her fingers.
The damn probe.
If they had just listened to her it would have been so much easier, but she had done the best she could under the circumstances. She had done what had to be done.
It had been roughly six months into their trip, barely halfway through their mission.
When she had accepted the position with the research team, she had thought that analyzing and classifying the planets in the sector they had been assigned would challenge her terra-forming knowledge. After only a month on board she had realized that it was going to be very different than she had imagined. The work was monotonous and repetitive and mostly consisted of evaluating long-distance sensor info, not analyzing environments on-site like she wanted to do. The others always found something that ruled out surface expeditions, and soon every new planet became just another source of disappointment.
Scanning the first long-distance data for this planet, she had immediately realized that it was ideal, near perfect for terra-forming, and she had wanted to get down there immediately. It was true that they had lost contact with the first probe, but that was just a technical mishap, and the others ought to have given in when she reported the impressive info from the second probe. Instead, they had requested access to the raw data feed. She had refused because it was unnecessary, but the others remained obsessed with seeing that raw feed. In spite of her expertise, in spite of the well-written reports and the excellent stats she provided, they did not want to listen to her.
She ate even though she wasn’t hungry. The whole time she could hear the wind outside - the sand hissing as it drifted over the dunes and rocks. She could feel it on her face, hear its mournful whine through the crevices and crannies of the cliffs. Voices. Their voices. She shook her head when she heard what they were saying. No, she said, no, it wasn’t like that. But that didn’t silence them.
She didn’t go to bed when darkness fell. It was impossible to see the sunset from inside the capsule, but you could see the sky shift from dark blue to black and then the night sky was split in half by the galaxy’s wide spiral arm, its brilliant white starlight casting shadows on the ground. She turned off all the lights until just the screen on the desk remained lit behind her: a cold, pale light fuelled by statistics, data, numbers, plans. More distant than starlight.
It was very cold out there at night. Ice and frozen sand, frost and cold fingers curled as though they were still trying to grab hold of something. Other hands stretched out as if to protect, or fend off. The wind was picking up, she heard the sand scraping against the windows and the hull, and she covered her face with her hands so that it wouldn’t get into her eyes.
If it drifts up against the door, she thought and the wind was screaming in her ears now, could not be shut out. If it drifts over the top and buries me.
The screams and the voices rushed at her, the words clearer now, more distinct, but she shook her head because they didn’t know, they didn’t see, they couldn’t know, they couldn’t see.
How long now?
She looked at the useless watch that kept flashing the same numbers, the same moment again and again and again.
They would find her. It was just a question of time.
When they finally did come she didn’t dare to move at first, hardly dared to breathe so as not to scare them, but they seemed completely unafraid.
I knew they’d come, she thought, leaning closer to see better - just the glass separating her from them now. She raised her hand in greeting, placing it on the window, fingers spread.
After a while they disappeared from sight and she stood up. The thermal suit was hanging in the closet but she didn’t need it.
They finally came. I knew they would. I knew they would come for me.
The door closed behind her as the outer hatch opened. She ventured into the darkness, into the cold, where they were waiting for her.
The capsule was almost completely buried when they reached it, and he thought to himself that it resembled a rock or a cliff formation, a part of the planet itself.
“Get going,” he said, pulling irritably at his tight silver collar adorned with the black leadership pin. “Looks like we’ll have to dig our way in.”
The wind pulled at his hood and the sand lashed his face when he turned around, squinting up at the ridge further away.
A noise. Distant.
He tried to catch it again but it was difficult to hear with the hood pulled up over his head.
It took less than ten minutes for the team to dig their way down to the outer hatch. When they were done they stood silent for a moment, leaning on their shovels. In their black outfits with silver click-seams they resembled nothing so much as a gathering of mourners.
The corpse patrol, he thought, brushing the sand off his shoulders. A well-deserved nickname perhaps, but they could at least have given us suits that look a little more cheerful.
“Perhaps their comm-system has been damaged,” he said in a loud voice to make himself heard over the wind. “We can’t know for sure. They may still be alive.”
When he closed his mouth grains of sand cracked between his teeth.
The hatch opened and they looked at each other but didn’t need to speak: they had all done this before. When they stepped inside they prepared themselves for the smell and sight of death.
“Light,” he said and the capsule was illuminated.
Empty.
The tension eased slightly around his shoulders and neck. Most of the interior seemed intact. Only one computer unit appeared to be damaged, its interface panel black and cracked but the screen on the work-desk seemed active. In a corner they found bloodstained clothing and empty packs of painkillers.
“Somebody’s been working here, after the crash,” one of his crew said after checking the work-desk.
“Working on what?”
“Looks like observation stats. They must have set up a couple of stations judging by this. But nothing from the probe as far as I can tell, neither the first nor the second one.”
“Not surprising considering that we haven’t found any traces of them either. Not even a positioning blip.”
“Crew of four, right?”
“Two men, two women, the usual. One terra-former, a couple of engineers, a ship’s specialist.”
“Somebody must have been injured. Almost half the pain pills are gone from the medical supply.”
“Okay,” he said. “A search party. You three. One k radius to start. Maybe they’ve collapsed close by. Look for tracks.”
“With this wind it’ll be difficult to find any kind of tracks. Anything older than a few hours, maybe even less, will be gone.”
“I know. But look anyway.”
“If they’ve spent the night outside they must be dead by now. It’s pure desert and tundra out there.”
When the others had left, he haphazardly went through the furnishings, the bedding and toolboxes.
“I don’t think they’ve been here for quite a while,” said his second in command who was still going through the work-desk entries. “The last info is a few weeks old already. Before that it seems to have been used almost daily.”
“So where are they?” he asked testily. “The life-support systems are intact and as far as I can tell the hull is intact as well. The rest of it is no worse than that they should’ve been able to fix it in a couple of days. The food and water supplies have hardly been touched, the solar panels are working. Why aren’t they here? Try to find the ship’s log. It must be here somewhere.”
“Maybe they snapped. Wouldn’t be the first time that happened. You and I have been on enough expeditions to know that. The psych problems in these teams are rampant. Even worse than our own.”
He was standing by the window, peering out into the sunlight.
Nothing but sand and wind out there, he thought. Sand and wind. Finally he said:
“Out there, when we approached. Did you hear something?”
“Hear something? Like what?”
In the light he could make out a palm print on the window.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Kind of a yell, or howl.”
“Human?”
“Perhaps.”
“I didn’t hear anything.