“We are now restricted to the private Mars First channel for all communications with Earth. No talking to anyone about this until we are advised further. We need to tell the girls.”
“What about the cameras? They’ve been filming us the whole time. No?” asked Tendai.
“Mars First headquarters purposely has a half hour delay on the re-transmission of the main feed they receive from us before the images go live. I’m sure they’ve already pulled the plug before anyone could see what had happened. They probably blamed it on the storm to avoid questions from the media,” replied François.
Outside the complex, fast winds were lifting sand around the small outpost. The dusty brown fog was now covering several kilometers. The storm had been raging for hours and was showing no sign of letting up anytime soon.
That night, they all gathered around in greenhouse II and observed a long moment of silence. Liu did not attend. Vera had given her a sedative to help her sleep.
Back in pod four, Vera and Ladli were sitting around Liu the next morning. Like everyone else on the station, the two women were devastated by what had just happened the prior day, but Liu was obviously the most affected. Her relationship with Najib had begun years ago back on Earth but had grown even stronger since their arrival on Mars. At the moment, she was a mess, and her two teammates were seriously concerned. She had stopped crying, but now her silence was even more worrisome. Staring straight in front of her at nothing, she was unresponsive to both Ladli and Vera who kept asking her if she was OK.
“Liu?” asked Vera again as she put a hand on her arm. “Liu, please, say something.”
Ladli was beginning to worry seriously about her friend as well. She knew how much Liu loved her husband. She still remembered, as if it was yesterday, how happy she was when he had asked her to marry him. Only a few days ago, Liu was still gleaming from the talk both had just had about having a child. Now, Liu looked as if she had aged twenty years. She was silent. Her eyes, glossy and foggy, were still puffed up from all the tears, and she looked white as a ghost. She didn’t flinch when Vera inserted a thin needle in her arm and injected her with “Corxa”, a relaxant, to help her sleep. She normally had a serious aversion to needles of any kind and was always a difficult patient. Now, she didn’t even seem to notice.
A few minutes later, Liu was sleeping again peacefully in her bed when Ladli and Vera left the room.
Dedrick was lying on his when the two women entered the pod.
“How is she?”
“She is sleeping, for now,” replied Vera.
“I think I’m gonna go back to my room. I’m exhausted. I’ll see you guys later.” said Ladli as she turned and proceeded to climb through the next passage, leaving the two to themselves. Continuing to the next pod, she lowered herself down into pod two, where Tendai and she spent most of their nights. He was seated in front of the computer.
“I just remembered why I can’t check my emails. François said we’re locked out of the system for now. Security reasons,” he offered without her asking.
“I know. I just left Liu. She’s OK for now, but Vera had to give her something else to help her sleep. Oh, Tendai, it’s so awful what happened to Najib,” she said as she sat on his lap, wrapped her arms around his waist, and leaned her head against his chest.
“I know, baby. I know…” he replied, holding her in his arms.
Outside their small window, far in the distance, the winds were picking up again beyond the plateau. Deep into the cliffs of the canyon, a small purple light was glowing inside a dark cave.
A needle in a haystack
François’ hand was wrapped around Sabrina’s left breast. The two were lying in a spooning position, when the alarm suddenly resounded, breaking the silence in their pod. Surprised by the loud noise, he jumped out of bed and rushed to the controls. Searching for the cause of the mayhem, he quickly located the red beacon on the panel. Someone had just opened the outside door of pod four.
“Merde! Liu!”
Rising slowly from under the covers, Sabrina, still half asleep, asked, “Hu… What is it, baby?”
François did not answer. Rushing out of the pod in his underwear, he rushed past Ladli and Tendai, and threw himself into the next tunnel.
“Dedrick! Dedrick! It’s Liu! She’s out!”
“Who? Wh… what?” mumbled the Russian, awakened by the sudden intrusion.
“Liu! She’s gone! She left the station.”
“What? How? What time is it?”
“Almost two in the morning. I just heard the alarm. She got out through her hatch. I’ve tried to find her with the outside cameras, but you can’t see shit out there! It’s still a mess with that storm.”
“Fuck! We got to go after her,” replied Dedrick, rushing out of bed.
“Oh my God! No. What is she doing?” Vera had just woken up. “Wait, I’m coming with you!”
“No. You stay here. It’s too dangerous. François and I will go.”
Dedrick grabbed his boots and, putting a hand on François’s shoulder, added, “Come on, let’s go!”
Within minutes, the entire base was on alert. Vera was trying to stay in contact with Derick’s rover. But the storm was messing up the signal.
“I had her a second ago. She was moving north-east towards Mount Shamsi. I think she’s heading for Najib’s block.”
“Ok, thanks. Don’t worry, we’ll find her.”
Vera wasn’t so confident. They all knew it, in that storm, it would be hard to see anything past a few meters, and she already had several minutes on them. They also knew she had only a few hours of breathable air in her suit, if the tanks were full.
The visibility was almost zero. The rover and its two passengers had been driving for over two hours now, forming wider and wider circles around the station, but with the storm still raging, finding Liu was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
“Fuck! I can’t see shit in this crap. What was she thinking? And the batteries are getting low, we’re gonna have to turn back soon. Still nothing?” asked François, trying to look at the radar screen in front of Dedrick.
“No. I got nothing. But the instruments are having a hard time with all this stuff flying around. How long do we have left?”
“We’re down to thirty-eight percent power and forty-one percent oxygen. We can’t stay out much longer.”
“Damn it! We must find her. We HAVE to!”
Dedrick didn’t need to spell out why. Both men knew her suit had enough oxygen for three hours at best.”
“Maybe we should… Wait! I’ve got something! Turn left!”
The suit Liu Xing was wearing was equipped, as were all their suits, with a transmitter that the rover’s radar system could detect, that is, up to a certain distance and weather permitting. Usually capable of detecting a signal over several hundred meters, the current weather conditions had drastically reduced that to a mere few dozen.
A weak beep suddenly appeared again on Dedrick screen as François veered left. Pushing on forward through the thick wall of dust, the two men were frantically looking in all directions around them, hoping to spot Liu in this foggy mess. Dedrick was also keeping an eye on the unreliable but helpful infrared camera.
“We’re close! She should be right in front of us.”
“I don’t see anything,” replied François.
“It’s this damn storm. It’s messing with the instruments. She can’t be far. I have a strong signal now.”