Pawprints in the Aeolian Dust by Eleanor R. Wood
Remaining time: 6 hours 38 minutes
My boot prints look odd in the amber dust. It’s been four months since the transport touched down, and I have been walking this plain nearly every day since we arrived. It’s only just dawned on me what’s wrong with the imprints I leave on the ground. They’re missing their counterpart.
They’re missing your footprints alongside them.
I haven’t cried since losing you, but the tears are welling now, threatening to mist up my visor. I swallow to relieve my tightening throat, but it’s no use. All I can see are the images of every Earth walk of the last fifteen years, superimposed over the rocky ground before me. My bare footprints in the wet sand; your pawprints in perfect outline beside them. My hiking-boot tread marks on the forest trail; your five-padded marks just in front. My shoe print in the wet, sucking mud; your footprint appearing for a brief moment before water fills it and the mud re-forms. I can see you looking back at me with your lolling grin, delighted to be outdoors with your pack mate, roaming, scenting, marking, being.
But I’m alone, and no walk was ever right without you. I took the mission after you died, hoping to leave the painful reminders behind and start new memories. I’d put on a brave face for too long: “men don’t cry” and all that nonsense. I fled the planet to escape my grief. Foolishness. It was never confined to a single orb, but tangled up in my soul. I dragged it with me into space, and now, on Martian soil, here is a stark reminder that your loss still guts me.
There are no dogs here. We have no sheep to herd, no rats to hunt, no kills to retrieve. Our territory needs no defending. We have no blind settlers to guide or smuggled drugs to detect. Yet I miss you more keenly at this moment than ever before. I’m so far from home . . . so far from our shared haunts. You’ll never again leave an imprint on Earth’s surface, and neither will I.
Aeolis Mons dominates the horizon to my left; the sheer wall of Gale Crater is somewhere off to my right. And in front of me. And behind. The Aeolian Plain seems vast, but only from my vantage point. From space, I’m standing in a circular imprint with a small mound at its centre.
Remaining time: 5 hours 11 minutes
Jorge and I rode the buggy twenty kilometres out from Bradbury Landing this morning. Most of the settlement was still asleep, but we wanted to make an early start. Priya’s tracking a dust storm headed our way, but she predicts it won’t hit before early evening.
“Have you made it to site six yet, Huw?” Jorge’s voice is tinny through my earpiece.
“On my way now, with samples from four and five,” I reply. “How ’bout you?”
“The drill was stuck at site ten, so I’ll have to bring Anders along next time to repair it. But I’m hoping to get a couple metres of core from eleven. We’ll need plenty to keep us busy if we’re gonna be stormbound for days!”
“That’s for sure. I’ve gathered a few surface-rock samples too—there are some interesting fragments out here, possibly volcanic.”
“Possibly?” Jorge laughs. “You seen this mountain?”
“Yeah, all right, smart alec.” I smile at his infectious guffaw. “No harm in keeping an open mind.”
“Well, there’s no doubt in mine, man. The ground up here’s littered with lava frags.”
“Make sure you bring some down with you, then!”
Jorge’s working the foothills while I take the plains. We need samples from both to see how they compare, but scouting Aeolis Mons itself is a task we haven’t got to yet.
The thought transports me back to the Brecon Beacons, with you. The steep trails were easier for your four legs than my two. You’d be ahead of me all the way, urging me onward until we reached the top of a bluff and stopped to take in the magnificent view along with our sandwiches. Always fish paste for you . . . your eternal favourite. Sometimes we’d stay until dark to absorb the dazzling sky. I was ten years old when Brecon Beacons National Park became an International Dark Sky Reserve. I remember begging my da to take me up there after dark. That first camping trip was the night I decided to be an astronaut. The magic of that sky, unobscured by so much as a particle of light pollution, remains the most breathtaking experience of my life. I have never felt tinier, or more massive. I felt the entire universe was mine for that brief moment. The need to get closer to it, to see it for myself, to be more than a passive observer, etched itself onto my bones.
And here I am twenty years on, collecting geological samples on Mars. I shove aside your love of beach pebbles as I pick up an especially smooth rock fragment. I refuse to dwell on your penchant for digging as I nudge soil away from an embedded piece of possible haematite. I can almost feel the sharp sting of sand as your efforts spray my legs.
No. I’m not doing this. Not now. A warehouse door clangs down in my mind, shutting the memory off. It hurts to push you away, but not as much as it would to cling to those times and everything we’ll never share again. I ignore my solo boot prints and continue my work.
The sun moves across the hazy sky as I move across the plain. The chronometer in my helmet tells me there’s plenty of time before Jorge and I have to worry about Priya’s forecast.
Remaining time: 3 hours 52 minutes
It’s wrong.
The dust storm hits just after 1400 hours. It begins as a rusty haze on the horizon, quickly darkening the sky as it approaches. My heart begins to pound as I turn back toward the buggy, which I’ve managed to leave far behind.
“Jorge? Are you seeing this storm?”
“I see it.” His reply is already fuzzed with static. “I’m on my way back, but I’m not going to make it before this thing hits.”
“Me neither. Just fix the buggy’s position and follow your display. I’ll see you there.”
His reply is garbled by static interference. It sounds affirmative, but I can’t be sure he heard what I said. Jorge’s experienced and level-headed; he’ll be fine. I break into a run, not daring to look over my shoulder at the approaching cloud. My vision fogs up as the first powdery particles fill the air like smoke. There’s no buffeting wind like you’d expect on Earth. The atmosphere is so thin here that I’d feel no more than a light breeze were I to strip off my suit. But in minutes I’m consumed by the cloud.
I keep level with the blinking light on my visor’s display, guiding me to the trusty buggy. I’m breathing deeply to stay calm, knowing there’s no real danger as I’ve already crossed this plain. I know there aren’t any sudden drops or ledges to stumble from, but I’m still walking blind. I’ve been out in dust storms before, but never this far from the settlement. Waiting it out isn’t an option—it could rage for days. My suit has already switched to its reserve oxygen supply, which gives me about two hours’ worth at normal exertion. The suit’s atmosphere compressors convert thin Martian air into gas dense enough to breathe, but with the air full of particles, the compressors have shut down to prevent the filters clogging.
I keep going, trusting my display and the ground beneath my feet. A warning blinker is telling me communications are down, but I’d twigged that following my chat with Jorge.
The dust swirls do funny things to one’s vision. The mind’s need to make patterns and sense from chaos creates images that come and go in seconds. It’s hypnotic and disorienting. My feet are taking me forward, but my eyes tell me I’m standing still amidst a maelstrom of moving shapes and whorls. As the dust becomes heavier, the light fades, its dusty orange glow subsumed by the thick brown air.
Something brushes against my leg. It’s the lightest touch through my suit. I look down and see nothing, of course; I can barely make out my own boot. I’m just about to dismiss it as a near-collision with an unseen boulder when I glimpse a shifting motion in the dust ahead. A bushy tail follows trotting brown feet into the curtain of gusting particles.
My treacherous heart leaps for an instant. I stop in my tracks as it falls again, hard. My throat clenches at the vision, so longed-for and so impossible. Curse this dust and my image-starved eyes. I take a breath, blink firmly, and trudge on.
The open-topped buggy looms out of the cloud a moment later. Dust has yet to settle on it, as the intense Martian breeze keeps it all moving. There’ll be a dense layer everywhere when the storm stops, but for now objects in its path are merely stung with millions of tiny grains which then continue on their way.
There’s no sign of Jorge. He must have gone farther than I did today. I take the driver’s seat and wait for him, peering ahead into the storm. Several minutes pass. My senses report nothing but the constant scattered ping of sand against my helmet. I could start driving the buggy toward Jorge and catch him up if I knew his precise direction. But even with the headlights on, I’d risk colliding with him. Or crashing into an unseen ridge.
Remaining time: 3 hours 18 minutes
I switch off the now-defunct storm countdown. My chrono says it’s been over half an hour since I spoke to Jorge. He should be here by now.
“Come on, Jorge,” I mutter, sharply aware that he can’t hear me.
I spot a defined shape in the dust. I lean forward, expecting Jorge’s suited form . . . but it’s smaller and nearer than I thought. The clogged air shifts, and my heart freezes.
You’re standing there. Your chocolate fur, with its ruffles and tufts, is clear against the red dust. Your back is to me and you’re looking over your shoulder, ears pricked, giving me your “What are you waiting for?” expression. The storm seems to hold its breath—or maybe that’s just me—but only for a moment before the vision is obscured. You walk on just as the dense cloud swallows you up.
I’m rooted to the spot, knowing I’m seeing things but desperate to follow. My heart is thumping and there’s a lump in my throat the size of a walnut. Even as I stand up and step away from the buggy my rational mind is demanding that I sit back down and get a grip. But your face . . . your eyes, dark and pleading, focusing their will on mine with an expression so familiar it’s like I saw it yesterday. Come with me.
It’s been over a year since I looked into that face. Your eyes were fogged with age, but they still regarded me with their depth of knowing, like you could see into my soul. You always could. It’s why I’m walking away from the buggy now, back into the blanket of dust, in a direction I haven’t walked today, over ground I have no reason to trust.
But I trust you.
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