Red Globe
Throughout history it had been known as the Red planet, or as some harbringer of war. Mars sat in the field of view and Elsa felt the same awe she had as a child as she flicked through the space agencies’ rovers images. She’d always thought of it as a Red Globe, the same as Earth was a Blue Globe – it had something to do with the orrery lampshade she’d had as a kid and her granddad’s drinks cabinet which was a giant earth that opened up.
It had been a globe – the earth had been a globe, Mars and the planets were globes; they saw them via the light they reflected back from the sun. They glowed like her lampshade and that seemed important for a globe. For most of her life, Mars had been an orange blob on a screen or via the telescope optics; it was real, and yet not.
Now she was sitting here looking out at the actual surface. There was a week to go before they would attempt to land. There was not much to do and the confined space had become ever more repressive as the journey drew near it’s end.
Worse, no one had really wanted to speak of the actual mission once they found their sister ship floating in the night. They had all known they might find it; mercifully, they had orders not to bother stopping for it. It was supposed to have already landed six months ago but the absence of any contact and the large unexpected solar flare had lead everyone to fear the worst.
It could have been them; no doubt, others would be lost too, and they themselves had not yet set down on the red planet. So many variables, so many risks, so many chances.
Sometimes she could hardly breathe when she thought about it all. The Phoenix’s hulk floating dead in space had shaken her, she was not going to deny that. No solution had been found to the radiation problems and sundry other issues with space flight, but when she thought of the rockets that first took humans into space she felt an overwhelming sense of pride – if they had managed it and, for the most, part came back, then so could she.
She called up her files again and started reading the geological reports amassed over the last half a century by various remote sensing and rover missions. They were gambling that the water supplies, the ice and the rock cavities were useable; if not, they had little leeway for supplies to be shipped in, although it was possible. Also her and Ben had worked out that they could mount a mission to the Phoenix, reducing the risk to their own survival – not that any of them really wanted to look at what was in that ship.
She shuddered and tried to blank her imagination, calcified half-dressed astronauts still kept creeping in, though, or tumbling in puddles of preserved puke, irradiated so no bacteria could have broken it down.
Being the backup mission meant they had exactly the same supplies on board; a multiple redundancy that had been added into the mission, as it clear it was going to cost lives. She was lucky she hadn’t been with some of the other companies; Prometheus Industries was incredibly concerned over safety, but even then, expected grave losses for this mission.
Every launch window there was they would be sending another mission. The two-year gap in between was problematic… Her mind wondered back to the Phoenix and wondered if they had died instantaneously or if it had taken days, or weeks. She hoped to hell that it hadn’t been months.
A data packet from Earth appeared and pinged itself into existence, stealing her attention. She smiled at the messages from her family and skimmed off the latest journals for her to review and read, looked through requests for video responses to various schools’ questions and the like – they had taken huge efforts to try and take continued contact with Earth with them.
To her surprise there was a message from Jonathan, the CEO of Prometheus Industries, a bitcoin millionaire who had really damn good plastic surgeons. His rugged features and unruly black hair, that glinted with the odd silver thread within, appeared. His blue eyes seemed to pierce her across the distance of interplanetary space.
‘Commander Elsa, I hope my message finds you well. This message is for you only. I fear the situation on Earth is deteriorating politically, with the final collapse of the bread bowl in India. There has been a drastic increase in violence and threats of war. I will do everything within my power to make sure the next missions are launched but I can not guarantee – things have gotten bad fast here. I am sorry, there is nothing else for me to say, it is up to you how you handle this with your crew. Do not mention this issue in any return correspondence.’
And then he was gone. She sat and stared at the rest of her messages, just stared, she didn’t read anything, she wasn’t even really thinking. Things were not brilliant when she left but not disastrous; sure, the US had fallen to pieces but that had happened when she was a kid. All that aside she knew that for now her family were still safe, that there was a chance of the next mission going to launch.
Sighing, she knew she wasn’t going to tell anybody else – not yet. But that did not mean she was not going to plan for the worst case. She pushed her self off of her seat and drifted to the compartment above her pilot seat; the blister packs of pills and serum sachets were still there, she prayed to a god she did not believe in that she would not feel the need to use them. The fact she was even checking they were still there was upsetting.
She looked back out the window at the Red Orb in front of her. ‘Well, Mars; looks like our lives are in your hands.’
She took a tranqualiser to sleep.
Posted: Sunday, October 12th, 2014 @ 12:17 am
Categories: Flash Fiction, The Punks World.
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