The little Martian
Several days had passed, and Dedrick couldn’t quite keep his focus on the task at hand. He and Tendai where bringing a new container of minerals to one of the greenhouses when Dedrick checked his wrist clock, again.
“I’d like to go check on Vera and Chasma, if you don’t mind.”
“What? Oh, yeah, of course, you go do that. I’m OK here. I got this. You go,” replied Tendai with a vague hand gesture.
“You’re sure you’re good?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m good. Don’t worry about me. Seriously,” he replied in a reassuring tone that gave Dedrick some sense of confidence he could leave the Zimbabwe man alone. He had recently noticed a change of mood in Tendai that worried him.
Tendai watched the Russian leave the room. He was now alone in greenhouse I. He couldn’t help thinking of the absurdity of it all; the entire population of Earth probably gone, and the seven of them stuck on Mars, with a newborn. Ladli was right, what were their odds of survival if the air recycling system failed, or a compartment of the base got punctured or damaged in some way? Their predicament was looking quite desperate, to say the least.
Trying to distract himself from his dreadful thoughts, the Zimbabwean slowly looked around him. A long row of identical rectangular boxes without tops, containing half a dozen plants each, was taking a good portion of the long structure. His eyes landed on a small plant bed at the end of the row, right by the back wall, near his bench bed. A smile came to his lips as he remembered Sabrina telling him once about François’ attempt to grow weed in that corner.
“Ha ha! Leave it to the Frenchman to bring marijuana to Mars,” he thought, amused.
Sabrina had told him how François had tried to keep his own experiment secret from them, and especially from Mars First, back on Earth. Apparently, the young Frenchman had managed to sneak several seeds with him on board MF1 right before launch. A few months after their landing on Mars, the several experiments ran by the team in the greenhouse had begun to show signs of growth, but most of the plants seemed slow to thrive, except for one tray. Before long, François had been forced to confess his attempt. That he had managed to keep it a secret for so many months was quite a feat in itself, especially with cameras watching the team’s every move. Tendai looked up at the only cam still in place in that corner of the ceiling. At one point, the station had counted sixteen inside and five outside. Of course, most of the ones inside had been turned off months ago when the communication between Earth and Mars had come to an abrupt stop. No one was watching the colonists anymore, and there was no need to waste energy. Some had been added to the five cameras already outside to give the small Martian community a better view of their surroundings. Back when the first four had landed, the world had watched in fascination the daily progress of the astronauts thanks to all the video feeds received directly from the Martian outpost. It was a miracle the Frenchman had never gotten caught by headquarters back then, or worse, by the media.
He giggled at the thought of François having timed his mischievous work during the quiet hours of night when the station was asleep. The ingenuity of the devious French technician had become obvious once caught. He had confessed how he had managed to run a pre-recorded video of the greenhouse through the video feed, allowing him to turn off the cameras when attending to his “secret garden.” He had even gone as far as recording a new one each week, so not to raise suspicion, as all the plants and vegetables grew a bit more each day. Nonetheless, they had all had a good laugh at the whole incident, including François after the initial disappointment of the failure of his hopeful project.
After a last check on the greenhouse systems, Tendai walked back to his pod and, feeling truly tired, eventually fell asleep. Later that night, Ladli joined him, after her long day at Vera’s side.
“She’s feeling much better. She’s gonna be fine,” she told him quietly as she slowly climbed in bed, next to him.
“That’s good. I’m glad,” he replied from under the covers.
“Maybe tomorrow will be a better day,” he thought to himself before slipping back into a deep sleep.
The colonists had agreed to explore the area where François believed some debris from MF3 had landed, after analyzing the exact trajectory of the ship right before the crash. Both he and Tendai had offered to go on a reconnaissance mission, to see if anything was salvageable. They didn’t expect to find much, but considering their situation, any spare parts for the station would be extremely welcome. It was a strange mix of excitement and sadness when the two had found a portion of the vessel. As mall section from the cargo area, still holding several space suits and bins of various sizes full of supplies, mostly intact.
“What are the chances?” had said François when he had found, untouched in one of the containers, the small spacesuit Mars First had sent especially for Chasma. It was a revolutionary design that offered several customization options, including the possibility to expand the suit itself, to follow the child’s physical growth. Expected to fit Chasma from the age of one to at least her early teens, it was a welcome gift to Dedrick and Vera who had already envisioned with dread that Chasma would have no choice but to stay inside the station until her adulthood, when one of their suits would finally fit her. A sad prospect for both child and parents that they were all glad no longer applied. The news had been a wonderful surprise to Vera when François had announced his discovery over his radio. He and Tendai were now about to leave the site.
“No, nothing yet from the cockpit. But we’ve spotted a few more debris about a quarter of a kilometer to the north. I think Tendai and I have taken everything we could from here. We’re gonna go check it out. I’ll get back in touch when we get there. François out.”
Jumping back in the rover, the two men began to trace across the rocky plateau, toward the second site. The sky was clear, and the sun was shining brightly on the metallic surfaces scattered ahead in the distance. They were less than 200 meters away from their destination when Tendai, who was driving, brought the rover to a sudden halt, making the tires scrape the dry dirt below them. François, jolted in his seat by the abrupt stop, was about to voice his disapproval of Tendai’s careless driving when he spotted the reason for his companion’s action. About a hundred eighty meters ahead, a section of the cockpit, completely blackened by the intensity of the fire that had enveloped it, was lying on its side, a large portion of its outer shell missing. Near the center of the chamber’s floor, now resting at a ninety-degree angle, still attached by their central aluminum leg, two of the seats were hanging a few meters above the ground, their suited occupants still harnessed to them. Most of the wreckage was an unrecognizable mess, with countless wires and fried computer panels hanging everywhere. Amidst the carnage, pieces of burned suits, melted with the shriveled fabric of the chairs, and their charcoaled human remains were a difficult sight to look at. The two men were silent, unable to take their eyes off the gruesome scene. Both knew they would never be able to erase the image now seared in their mind forever. Tendai eventually resumed their approach.
The body on the right, although as black as the rest of the scene, showed an obvious skeletal arm and head, still fairly recognizable.
“Ebba!” thought François. “Fuck!” he finally said out loud.