Old Mars

King of the Cheap Romance JOE R. LANSDALE

I GLANCED AT THE BODY AND TREMBLED. I LOOKED AT THE blue ice directly in front of me, and beyond that at the vast polar regions of Mars, stretched out flat, and way beyond that was a mountain rise. Past that rise was where I needed to go. I felt cold and miserable and sad, and for one long moment I wanted to quit. Then I told myself, that’s not what Dad would have wanted. That’s not what he would have wanted his daughter to do.

We Kings, we weren’t quitters. It had been drummed into my head since birth. I looked down at Dad’s corpse, all that was left of my family, wrapped in silver bedding, lying on the sled, and it was as if I could hear him now. “Angela, put your ears back and your nose forward, and keep going. That’s how we do. Just like an old mule. That’s how we Kings are. We keep on going when everyone else has already quit.”

That made me feel strong for a moment or two, then I was thinking back on how I had ended up where I was, and that took the zip out of me again. I couldn’t get hold of being here on the ice, after only moments before being high in the air. It felt as if it was all some kind of dream, some astral visitation of someone else’s life who looked like me and had a dead dad. But the real me was somewhere else, and at any moment I’d snap awake and find myself back in the silver airship, cruising high above the Martian ice.

I didn’t, though.

It was really me. Angela King. Out on the ice, breathing out air puffy and white as clouds, the body of my father lying on a sled at my feet.

I took a deep breath of chilly air and determined then that I had to get over my feelings of defeat. I was a King. I couldn’t quit. Something might quit me, but I wouldn’t quit. Not until I was as dead as Dad.

What happened was this.

The fever hit the Far Side, as we called the city long beyond the mountains. The Martian fever is a nasty beast. It comes on sudden and hot and burns the mind right out of a person, turns them red, mounds up pus-filled lesions quick-time, makes a person quiver, scream and rave, go completely off their nut. No one really knew how it gets started, but it happened now and then, comes out of nowhere like rain from a clear, sunny sky. It was thought to have something to do with certain kinds of Martian water, melted snow that flowed down out of the mountains and joined up in streams and creeks that got into the water supply. Mars was mostly hot, dry desert, but up around the ice caps it was rich in water, cold and savage.

Though the fever was brutal, there was a cure, and it was mighty effective, if not readily available. That’s what my father and I were trying to do, make it available. It was considered a routine trip, though any trip on Mars can blow out and go bad in quick-time. Just when you thought things were good and the land was tamed, Mars would throw a trick at you.

The ship we had was quick and light. It held us and a couple of sleds, which we didn’t think we’d need, an emergency stash of supplies, and a small, padded leather bag of vaccine. That’s all it took, a small bag containing a few vials. A bit of it went a long way. In fact, Dad said a drop would fix the fever and keep you from having it again, which meant it didn’t take much at all to cure an entire Martian city, and on Mars a city was about two to three thousand. Dad said on Earth you’d call that kind of gathering a town, maybe even a community. But on Mars it was a city. I didn’t remember Earth too well, and had yet to go back, the return trip being so expensive and me not really wanting to go. I liked it on the Red Planet, out in the area where it wasn’t red at all, but blue and white with freezing ice.

Anyway, Dad said a drop of vaccine would do, and he ought to know. He was a doctor before he died out there on the ice.

Dad had not wanted me to come. He always said, “On Mars, things can and do go wrong, regular as clockwork, and irregularly too.”

But since my mom was dead and I would have had to stay with people I didn’t know well, I whined my way into the glider, and up we went, powered by sunlight, carried by whining turbines, darting fast through the thin-aired Martian sky. When we started out, both moons were up and shiny as silver. Dad said he could never quite get used to two moons. I didn’t remember much about Earth, but I did remember it had one moon in the sky. That seemed pretty deficient after living on Mars with one moon fast and one moon slow, both bright in the sky and looking not so far, as if you could stand on a ladder and touch them.

We sailed along under the moonlight. The night air sucked into the turbines and fed them and charged them along with solar and whatever those pellets were that Dad put in the sliding tray that slid in and out of the instrument panel.

I sat in the copilot chair, having learned a thing or two about navigation, and we cruised through the last of the dying night; and then the light rose up and the world below went from shiny black to blue-and-white ice. What I think about is how if we’d have left a few seconds earlier, or a few seconds later, none of it might have happened. But there we were with first light on the windshield, then the shield turned dark, and there was a whomp, a sound like some kind of machine tearing metal. It wasn’t metal though, It wasn’t the ship. It was the scream of the Martian Bat. The damn things are huge, and, unlike Earth bats, which Dad says travel by night, Martian Bats travel day and night but are blind, their eyes huge and white as snow. They are guided by some kind of in-built radar. That radar helps them find prey, and I guess the bat thought we were one of the great blue birds that fly over the ice, for it came at us and let out with its horrid scream that sounded like metal ripping. The craft twisted and swirled, but held to the sky all right, at least until the Bat bit us and clawed us and we started to come apart.

The craft killed the bat due to the collision of its wings or part of the beast’s being sucked into a turbine. Whatever did it, we both went down. I remember seeing out the windshield a glimpse of bat’s wings, a near subliminal glimpse of those white eyes and that toothy mouth. The front end of the ship bent up, and down we went. Had the bat not had hold of us, had what was left of its massive wings not held and glided, we would have dropped faster than a stone and with the sudden impact of ripe fruit being slammed on rocks.

Still, when we hit, I was knocked unconscious.

Coming to, I discovered I was lying on the ice. I had on my insulated suit. Dad had insisted I wear it, even in the craft, and I was glad then I had. I didn’t have the hood pulled up, though, and when I sat up on the ice, stiff and sore, I pulled it over my head and lifted up the goggles and the chin cover that had been lying on my chest, suspended there by a dangling strap.

I tried to get up, but it was like I was wrestling someone invisible. I just couldn’t do it, at least not at first. It was as if whatever kept me balanced had been knocked off its gyro. I finally got my feet under me, which took me so long I thought maybe a Martian year had passed. When I did get to my feet, I looked around for Dad but couldn’t find him. Over the hill, I saw the Martian buzzards gathering, their red-tipped wings catching the rays of the sun. I stumbled over a little mound of snow, and there was the ship. Or what was left of it. It was so wadded up with the bat, which was about the same size, that it looked as if a great leathery black animal had mated with a silver bird and fallen to earth in blind passion.

Moving that way, I soon saw Dad, lying out on the ice. When I trudged to where he lay, I saw the snow around him had blossomed red and frozen, like a strawberry ice drink. I got down on my knees and tried to help him. He put out a hand.

“Don’t touch me,” he said. “It hurts too much.”

“Oh, Dad,” I said.

“There’s nothing for it,” he said. “Not a thing. I’m bleeding out.”

“I know how to sew you up,” I said. “You taught me.”

He shook his head. “Won’t do any good. I’m all torn up inside. I can feel how stuff has moved around, and I’m not getting any stronger here. Prop me up.”

There was a seat cushion, and I got that. I took it back to Dad, gently lifted him up, and rested his head on it.

He said, “When the sun gets to the middle there, I won’t be with you.”

“Don’t say that,” I said.

“I’m not trying to scare you,” he said. “I’m telling you how things are, and I’m about to tell you how things have to be, before I’m too weak to do it. I’m going to die, and you should leave me here and take the medicine, if it survived, if you can find it, and you got to take one of the sleds and go across the ice, into the mountains, and make your way over to Far Side.”

“That’s miles and miles,” I said.

“It is, but you can do it. I have faith. Those people have to have the cure.”

“What about you?” I said.

“I told you how that’s going to turn out. I love you. I did my best. You have to do the same.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“He didn’t have anything to do with it. Alive or dead, he never shows up. You got to do it on your own, and the thing that’s got to carry you is knowing that you’re a King. Think of it like an adventure, like those cheap romance novels I used to read to you.”

He meant adventure novels. They were old stories, like Ivanhoe, and he said they were called romances, but they were primarily stories of high adventure. Right then, I didn’t feel too terribly adventurous. I wanted to lie down beside him and die right along with him. When I was dead, I didn’t care what happened to us. Frozen in ice, or eaten by snow runners, or those buzzards with red-tipped wings. It was all the same to me.

“You got to see yourself as a hero,” Dad said. “You got to see yourself as a savior. I know that sounds prideful, but you got to see yourself that way. You got to find that bag, and you got to put it and you on a sled and start out. The supplies may have survived too. You’ll need them. There are plenty of things out there on the Martian ice, so you got to stay alert. You’ll be able to make it. Go quick as you can. But watch for the ice, and what’s under the ice, and what flies above it, and what lives on it.”

I nodded.

Dad grinned then. “I’m not making it sound easy.”

“No,” I said. “You’re not.”

“Well, it isn’t easy. But you’re a King. You can do it.”

And I swear right then, no sooner had he said those words, he closed his eyes and was as long gone as the day before.

The smart thing to do was to leave him, but I couldn’t. Not to be eaten by Martian birds, and whatever else might come along. I strapped him onto one of the sleds that I found in the wreckage. There were two. The other had been crunched up and was nearly in a ball. The one I used had some bends and gaps in the metal, but it was serviceable. I searched around for the medicine and supplies. They were easy to find. I put them on the sled.

The supplies had food and water and lighting, first aid, flares, blankets, tubes of this and that, and even a pair of snowshoes, all tightened up in a little bundle; but with a touch of a finger they would spread out and form to any foot.

I went then and got Dad and dragged him over to the sled. Being so confused, I didn’t have enough sense to take the sled to him. I pulled one of the five weather blankets from the supply packet and wrapped him in it. It fastened up easy on the sides, and over his feet and head. I managed him into the sled, up near the front. I put the supplies and the medicine in there with him.

I took my place in the seat and pulled the clear lid over me and sat there and thought a moment. Looking out in front of me, seeing Dad’s body shaped in the blanket, I started to cry. That went on for a while. I won’t lie to you. It was a tough moment, and right then, once again, I thought maybe the Kings did quit; at least this one might.

Finally, I got myself together and turned the switch and hit the throttle. The sled jumped forward and I steered. As I went, I popped one of the compass pills. I didn’t feel anything at first, but then there was a subtle twist in my brain, like a hot worm trying to find a place to rest, and I knew. I knew how to go. The pills were like that. One could get you set in the direction you needed. They were made from a Martian worm, which is why I said I felt like a worm was in my head. It was that kind of sensation. Something in the worm’s DNA allowed it to travel from one end of Mars to another; consuming one, you got the same ability. You knew what the worm knew, and all it knew was direction. You didn’t have to wait as long for it to kick in. It was nearly an instant sensation.

The sled hummed and the rig beneath it split the snow and slid across the ice. It had some lift about it too. I needed it, the machine could float up to ten or twelve feet, and I could float on water, and it was airtight enough to act for a short time like a minisubmarine. It sure beat snowshoes.

All this world, and all the worlds there are, and all the stars, and all that is our universe, are connected. That’s what Dad used to tell me. I, however, felt anything but connected. I felt like a particle to which nothing could be fastened.

I sled-bumped a few spots where the snow had drifted across the ice, then there were no drifts, just this long expanse of blue and white like a sheet stretched tight, and far away a thin line of mountains on the horizon that seemed to recede, not come closer.

After some time, I stopped and popped the lid on the sled and got out. Inside the sled, it was comfortable because there was a heater and I had wrapped my legs in one of the thermal blankets, the same sort Dad’s body was wrapped in. Outside, the air cut like a frozen knife. I found a spot to relieve myself that looked like all the other spots available. I dropped my pants and squatted to pee. It was cold on my butt. Anyway, I did my business, and while I was doing it, I saw it coming.

At first, I thought it was an illusion, mirage. But no, it was real. A black fin had broken the ice, and it had broken it violently enough that I heard it crack, though I figure I was a quarter mile from that fin. I didn’t know what it was from experience, but I had read about it and recognized it that way.

It was an ice shark, big as killer whales on Earth, but sleeker, with a black fin and tentacles that exploded from its head like confetti strands but were considerably more dangerous. It could travel on the surface or underneath, and could even crawl on land for a long time. Its fin was harder than any known metal and could crack the ice without effort. The ice shark had a tremendous sense of smell, a bit of radar, not as highly developed as the bat, but effective enough. It could squeeze into tight places, like oatmeal sliding through a colander. It had most likely smelled my urine and had come for lunch.

I yanked up my pants and made a quick-step trip back to the sled, slid into place, and closed the lid and gave it the juice. Too much juice. It jumped, came back down with a smack. For a horrid moment, I thought maybe I had done myself in, destroyed my transportation and shelter, but then, away it went.

I pulled the view screen over and took a look through the backview cameras. It was still coming, and it looked closer, and I knew those cameras were not entirely accurate; the shark was considerably closer than it appeared.

The sled had more juice to be given, but I saved it because the more you used, the more sunlight you needed to keep it charged, and now, to make matters worse, the light was dropping down over the moving mountains. When nightfall came I would have power, but it sometimes faltered then, if the sled was given full throttle. Still, if I slowed too much, the shark would catch me. Crunch the craft in its great teeth, snapping it apart, getting to the gooey, tasty center inside, meaning, of course, me and my dad.

That shark couldn’t have known I would be more vulnerable come night, but it sure seemed to. It came fast behind me but was never able to catch me, even though I had only pushed the throttle a little more than before. Yet, it was like it knew I had limitations. That if all it did was wait, I would have to slow down and it would have me.

It was growing dark, but I could still see the line of mountains and the vast expanse of nothing around me, then all of a sudden the light washed out and the moons rose up. I turned on the lights.

And then it happened.

Even inside the sled, I could hear the ice crack, and then I could see them. I had never actually seen them for real, just vids, but there they were, cracking up through the ice and rising up and sliding along—the Climbing Bergs. They were rises of solid ice that came down from the depths where it was cold and wet and where the old, old Mars was. They would break open the surface and slide along and suck in the air. They were mounds of ice full of living organisms that owned them. Living organisms that came up for air and pulled it in and renewed themselves like Southern Earth ladies with handshaking fans on a hot day in church. Sometimes they were empty ice—clear ice you could see all the way through. And sometimes the ice held the ancient Mars inside of it. I had heard of that, extinct animals, and even Martians themselves, though there had only been fragments of that discovered, and most stories about them were legends, as the ice soon sank back down into the depths, taking their ancient treasures and information with them.

The ice cracked loud as doom and rose up and the moons flashed on the clean, clear ice, and the moonlight shone through it. It covered my entire path, and inside of the ice I could see something: a dark shadow. The shadow was in the center of the ice, and it was a shadow that covered acres and rose up high. Then I was close enough that I could see better what the shadow was. It almost took my breath away, almost made me forget about what was behind me. It was a slanting slide of ice that went directly up against the icy wall of the berg, and inside the berg was a huge set of stone stairs that rose up to a stone pyramid, and the stairs went inside and dipped into the dark. The ice between the outside and the pyramid looked thin, as if it might be hollow inside the berg.

I knew this much. I couldn’t keep outrunning the shark. In time the sunlight would wear, and the sled would slow. I had a sudden wild thought, but it was the only one I had. Besides, going around the berg might take hours; it was that big.

I glanced in the mirror and saw the shark’s fin, poking high, and I could see its shape shimmering beneath the ice. A huge shape, and I could see that it was, as I said, a monster that in spite of its name was really nothing like a shark. It was a dark form that was formless; it moved like gelatin, except for the fin, which stayed steady, sawing through the ice effortlessly.

Aiming the sled for the natural slide of ice, I gave the machine full throttle. I knew I was sacrificing some of my juice, but it was as good a plan as any I could think of.

I slid up the ice and came hard against the cold, clear wall of the berg, and killed the engine. I flipped the top and got out, leaned over and tore the supply bag open. Jerking out three of the thermal sticks, better known as flares, I gave them a twist and tossed them against the ice. They blossomed with flame. The flames rose up high and the heat singed my hair and made a kind of hissing sound as it melted a big hole in the ice. It was as I had hoped, a thin wall of ice, and inside, it was open; it was as if the ice were a glass cake cover of unusual shape and design, dipped over a pyramidal cake.

I looked back. The shark tore its whole body through the ice. It shifted and twisted and wadded, and finally it roared. It was a roar so loud I felt the ice beneath me shake. The roar and the wind carried its horrid breath to me. It was so foul I thought I might throw up. Its shape changed, became less flat and more solid, tentacles flashed out from its head, and I could see flippers on its belly, between those dipped little legs with bony hooks for feet. It was slithering and clawing its way across the cold space between me and it.

Back in the sled with the lid pulled down, I gunned forward and drove in and bounced up the steps, and then I was inside the pyramid. The lights on the sled showed me the way. I went along a large hallway, if something that large could be called a hall. On either side were strange statues of tall, thin creatures that resembled men. I zoomed by them and came to two wide-open doors made of something I couldn’t identify. They were wide enough for me to sled through, leaving several feet on either side.

Once I was inside, I grabbed a light from the supply bag, got out and tried to push one of the doors, but it was too heavy. Then I had an idea. I got back in the sled and circled it back against one of the doors and pushed, and it moved, slammed shut. I did the same with the other. I got out to make sure, flashed the light around. I could see there was a lock on the doors. It was too large for me to handle. I saw on one side of the door a rectangular gap. Running over there, I poked the light inside. There was a switch in there. I grabbed hold of it and tugged. It creaked and made a noise like a begging child, then I heard the lock slam into place. I had taken a guess, and I had been lucky. I had pulled the right switch, and the amazing thing still worked. It had most likely not moved since before the beginnings of civilization on Earth, and yet, there was no rust, no decay. It worked. A little squeaky, but otherwise, fully serviceable. If I hadn’t been in such a tight spot, I might have marveled even more at this turn of events.

It wasn’t really damp inside the pyramid. Inside its icy den it was clean and clear and there was air. If I remembered what I had read about the microscopic things in the ice, they would rise every now and then—maybe centuries passed before they rose—and they would suck at the air, and they would give off air as well, they would fill the void around them with it. Before, this had merely been speculation, but I was breathing that air and I could verify it. In fact, the atmosphere inside the pyramid was so rich it made me feel a little light-headed.

Then I heard the shark hit the door. It had come out of the ice and onto the steps. It struck the door hard. The door shook, but held. I crawled back inside the sled, and with the lights guiding my path, I drove it deeper into the structure’s interior.

I finally came to a large room, and, even more amazing, it was lighted. The lights were like huge blisters on the walls, and there were plenty of them. They gave off an orange glow. They were not strong lights, but they were more than adequate to see by. I killed the sled’s beams and engine, got out and looked around. At first, I couldn’t understand how the lights could exist, but then I thought about the old Martian technology that had been uncovered over the years. Things that had existed and survived and not decayed for millennia, such as that door lock. They had been so far ahead of us in many ways that it was impossible to comprehend. Add to that this strange iceberg, this thing made of ice and creatures that sealed off this world from water and decay, provided oxygen, then sunk back to the bottom of the sea, and it was enough to make my head spin.

There were sheets of ice where one wall of the pyramid had actually been destroyed by what looked like an explosion. That part of the wall had a large bubble of ice that swelled out from it, and there was a sheet of ice on the outside of the pyramid, and, inside the enclosed bubble, there were beings. I blinked. They were sitting in great stone chairs, and they were frozen solid. They were easily eight feet high and golden-skinned, with smooth heads and closed eyes. Their noses were flat against their faces and their mouths were slightly open, and I could see yellow teeth that looked hard and like little carved stones. They had long fingers and, leaning against the seats or thrones on which they rested, weapons. Things that might have been guns, long and lean of barrel, without any real stock, but with apparatus on both sides that looked like sights and triggers. There were harpoons, twelve feet long, at least, with long blue-black blades. They looked heavy.

Whatever had broken the outside wall, it had caused these beings to be frozen, instantly. I could only imagine a war in ages past, an explosive that opened them to the outside air, which must have been freezing. But the truth is, I can’t really explain it. All I can say is there they were and I have seen them.

I walked about the huge palace room, for that was what I concluded it was. That was only a guess, of course, but it was the one I decided on. Now that my eyes had adjusted, I could see that there were thumb-sized red worms on the floor, and my feet were crunching them as I walked. There were worms in the walls, at least where the stones had separated, and when I looked up I could see movement on the high ceiling. I flashed my light up there, to help brighten the orange glow of the room. I saw that it was the worms. They skittered over the ceiling on caterpillar legs, fell to the floor now and again like bloody rain.

In the distance, I could hear a booming sound. I realized that it was the ice shark, slamming itself against the great doors of the pyramid. My idea was to find a back way out. Use a couple of the thermal flares to cut the ice cover loose and flee, maybe without the monster knowing I was gone. But all I found was a gap in the wall and a split of six tall and wide corridors that fled into darkness.

Hurrying back to the sled, I closed the lid and fired it up, moving across the floor with the sled’s lights sweeping before me. I came to the divided corridors and hesitated. I had no idea which one I should take, or if any of them led to an exit. I sat there and thought about it, finally decided to take the middle one. I reached out, gently touched Dad’s wrapped body for luck, then I throttled off into the middle corridor.

In the lights, the red worms seemed to leak from the stones. As I went, behind me I heard a loud shattering sound. The doors. The ice shark had broken them down. That had to be it. I couldn’t believe it. The damn thing was not a quitter. Like a King, it stayed on track.

All I could do was concentrate on what was in front of me. Along I went and it was deep dark in there. My sled lights had begun to flicker and waver. I had probably used more of its energy than I thought while fleeing the ice shark. I didn’t know what to do other than to keep going forward, so I did. When I felt I would go on forever, there was a glow, and I was out of the tunnel, which emptied out onto an icy ridge. It was the moons that gave the glow, and in front of the ridge was a great long, sleek ship of shiny metal, a seagoing ship with massive, paper-thin metal sails. It took a moment before I realized that it too was inside the icy bubble. The bubble had broken in spots, and new barriers of ice had developed, and there were sheets that dipped down from above and onto the ship, like ice-fairy slides. The stern of the ship was open, and there was a drop door that lay on what had once been the dock. I directed the sled that way and drove inside.

I drove along the open path, and it was wide and tall, for it had been made for the golden Martians. That made it so that I could use it like a road. I drove into the depths of the ship and along a corridor. Finally, I stopped and got out, pulled open a partially open door, and looked inside. It was a great room. The sled, though powerful when completely charged, is light as a feather. I pushed it inside the room effortlessly, came out, and closed the door. I thought I would leave it there for safekeeping while I looked about for a way out on foot. I wanted to preserve what power it had left. If I could get out on the ice, and if I could manage to keep it moving until daylight, it would start soaking up the rays of the sun again, and the more sun it got, the faster it would go.

Moving along quickly, I came to a vast opening, with great portholes on either side. In front of me, I saw an immense chair in front of a wide stretch of viewing shield.

I eased in that direction and saw a long, massive leg poking out. When I went around and looked, there was one of the Martians. Golden and huge. Bigger than the others. His hands lay on a large wheel, and at his right, and on his left, were gears and buttons and all manner of devices, and beneath them were squiggle shapes that I figured were some kind of long-lost language.

I examined his face. His eyes were open, and he still had eyes. They had not rotted. They were frosted over, like icing on doughnuts. Part of his skin had fallen away in a few spots, and I determined this wasn’t from decay. It was from wounds that had been inflicted. He had been attacked while he sat in this chair. Perhaps trying to direct the ship to sea. On the wall to the far right was a row of harpoons like those I had seen earlier. They were on racks and I figured they were for show, maybe old, ceremonial weapons more than ones they might have used when their world went from top to bottom, from air to ice, but those blades looked mighty sharp and dangerous nonetheless.

It took some work, but I climbed on the control panel and looked out through the great view glass in front of the Martian and his chair. The moons were bright and there was a thin see-through icy barrier in front of the ship, and beyond it, more flat ice, and way, way off, the dark pattern of the mountains. It looked so far away, right then I felt sick to my stomach.

Then came a wheezing sound, a cracking of things, and I knew instinctively that the ice shark had followed me here. I’ll be honest. I thought the ice shark would quit. They can survive off the ice and out of the sea, but I didn’t know they could stay out so long—but sure enough, it was the shark; I could smell it. I couldn’t see it, but that odor it had was of things long dead in water, of all its recent meals come up in gassy bubbles from its stomach (stomachs, I’m told), and it had all oozed out in an aroma so bitter I felt as if my eyebrows were curling.

I went and stood on a counter in front of the rack that held the weapons and picked the smallest harpoon there. This one would have been really small in the hands of that seated Martian, a light throwing spear for him, but for me it was heavy yet manageable. I pulled the harpoon down, jumped to the floor and moved swiftly to the opening that led out, then I heard it coming down the hall. It was wheezing and slipping and sliding over that ship’s ancient floor, and it sounded near.

Back in the control room, I climbed up on the counter again. It ran along the wall and past the portholes. I hustled to one of the portholes and used the tip of the harpoon to pry at it. I worked hard, but it didn’t move. I could hear the ice shark coming, and its smell was overwhelming. Just when I thought that the thing was in the room with me, the porthole snapped beneath my prodding, popped completely out, and went shattering onto the deck below. I tossed the harpoon out, then lowered myself out of the hole and dropped about eight feet to the deck. I picked up the harpoon and hustled along the deck, trying to find my way to the room where I had left the sled and my poor dad’s body.

When I glanced back, that monstrous thing was easing out of the porthole like it was made of grease. When its dark head poked through, it ballooned wide again and the rows of teeth reassembled and tentacles popped from its head. Its bright white china-plate eyes turned toward me on a thin neck, which was swelling large as it eased out of the porthole. I knew then that it would never give up. I remembered my dad said: “The ice shark is a big booger, but it’s got a brain about the size of an apple. A small apple. It rests right between the bad thing’s eyes. That’s what makes it dangerous. That small brain. It doesn’t consider alternatives. It’s a lot like a lot of people in that respect. It makes a decision and sticks to it, whether it makes any sense or not. It finds its prey and it doesn’t give up until it eats it or it gets away.”

The shark’s head hit the deck with a plop, and it began to slither. As the rest of it came out of the porthole, it swelled, and tentacles popped from the rest of its gooey form and those little legs sprang out. What was coming out of the porthole was at least twenty times bigger than me.

For too long a moment, I was welded to that spot by fear; and then the spell broke. I think it was the stink that did it, struck me like a fist. I turned and ran along the deck. Behind me, the ice shark wailed so loud that my ears ached. I grabbed at a door that led inside. Locked. I tried another. More of the same.

I finally found one that was not locked, but it wasn’t coming open easy. I put my whole 140 pounds and six feet against it (I’m a big girl), but it still didn’t move. Along came the shark, slithering and making that unpleasant screeching noise. I gathered up all the strength I had, and some I borrowed from somewhere I didn’t know existed, and shoved and shoved at that door with all my might. The door moved. It made a crack wide enough for me to slip inside. On the floor by the door was the corpse of one of the Martians. It had fallen there some ages ago in combat, perhaps against invaders that had killed it and the others and went away with heaps of spoils. Its head was almost lopped off its body, and a dark goo had run from it and dried to the floor and turned solid as stone.

I jumped over the body and scrambled down the hall just as the shark broke through. I turned my head to see both of its eyes looking at me in the near dark. They glowed like white fire. Then it dipped its head and took to that long-dead Martian’s body, began gobbling it up with a sound like a turkey choking to death on too much corn. I wondered if it had done the same to the Martian in the chair, gobbled it up, but I must admit, neither of those long-dead creatures was a big concern. What I was worrying about was if I was going to get away.

Doors were closed in the hall, and the only light was the dual moonlight slanting through portholes on my right side. And then the hall came to an end. It emptied at a wide-open door that was not an exit, but was in fact a row of shelves, and the shelves had dividers, like a bee’s honeycomb. There was nowhere for me to go now.

I was trapped.

There’s no true description of how I felt. You can’t put that kind of desperate emptiness into real words. I can say it was like a pit opened up and I dropped through, but that can’t be right because that’s at least someplace to go. I could say everything fell in on me, but that would have either killed me outright or given me something to hide behind. No. I was out there. Naked in state of mind. The ice shark was coming. I could hear it slurping along the floor, wailing so loud the ship’s walls shook. My heart beat so hard against my chest that I thought it was going to spring out of me. It was as the old Earth saying went: It was die dog or eat the hatchet time.

The shelves were large and easy to climb, so I took that route. It was a route to nowhere, but I took it anyway. I pushed the harpoon into one, then climbed up on it, pushed the harpoon into the higher shelf, and climbed into that one. When I got to the top, the shark entered the room. I turned just in time, clutched my harpoon, and put my back against the wall of my cubbyhole, pushed the haft of the harpoon under my arm so that it was braced against the wall too, and waited for it, knowing full well it wouldn’t have any problem entering that little space where I waited, not with what its body could do.

Let me tell you how it came.

Like the proverbial bullet, that’s how. There was the space before me, empty, then there was the stink; and then—

—it was there.

It thrust forward hard against the opening of the shelf with a flash of teeth, a glow of white eyes, like head beams, and it hit the harpoon point and let out with a scream like an old woman on fire. It writhed and slammed against the walls of the shelf hard enough that I heard them crack, then its head flexed rapidly, and it became smaller, and it tried to dart into the shelf with me. I shifted the harpoon, remembering what Dad had said about that small brain, that little apple between its eyes, and I poked at that, and I poked at that. It popped back and away, throwing those tentacles that were sometimes concealed in its head out wide. They flexed and flashed in the air like Medusa’s snakes. It came again, and I screamed with fear and anger, lunged, stuck it deep with that harpoon. I kept lunging, and ichor like a stomped caterpillar sputtered out of it and splashed my face. It felt like pus from exploded pimples. I kept jabbing, and it kept shrieking, then—

—it went away.

Or rather moved out of my sight.

I sat there trembling with fear, my body covered in its innards, or brains, or whatever that mess was.

Had I killed it? Walking on my knees I made my way to the edge of the shelf, poked my head out—

—it rose up like a serpent and stuck with a screech.

It was reflex. I screamed almost as loud as it was screeching, poked out with the harpoon, not at any target mind you, just poking at it, poking in fear. The harpoon went in deep, and the shark jerked back, and that yanked the harpoon from my grasp. I thought: Okay, Angela, this is it, you might as well hang your head between your legs and kiss your ass good-bye, because in the next few moments it will have you, and the last thing you’ll hear is a crunch as it bites through you, then for you it’s ice-shark digestion and a bowel release of your remains beneath the icy sea.

It slammed against me then, cracking the shelf. The haft of the harpoon, which had been jerked from me, hit me between the eyes. Stars gathered up and filled my head. The shelf cracked more, then I fell and the stars dropped backward into the blackness.

When I awoke, I was on the shark, and it had gone flat, like a dish-rag. I got up slowly and looked about. Only its head was a mound, and I could see the harpoon sticking out of it like a unicorn horn.

The thing had spread out so much it filled the long hall and trailed all the way down it. I got up slowly and fell back against the wall by a porthole. I had, by accident, not by design, hit that apple between its eyes. I had tried repeatedly to do that without success; and then, due to fear, desperation, and happy accident, I had managed it.

I laughed. I don’t know why. But I laughed way loud.

Gathering myself—and let me tell you, at that point there was a lot to gather—I started looking for my sled. I went down the corridor, walking on the ice shark for a long way, and finally I came to another corridor, and that led to another. I realized I was getting more confused, so I backtracked the way I had come, and finally I came to where the Martian body had lain by the door but was now gone, consumed by the dead ice shark. I went out that door and along the deck of the ship, looked up at the porthole I had dropped out of. It was too high up to climb. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I felt the ship shift. Then shift again.

I assumed for a moment that the berg was merely moving, but when I looked past the bubble of ice that contained the ship, I saw that the frozen surface over the sea was cracking. The berg was about to settle again, way down in the deeps like an enormous stone. And I was trapped.

I couldn’t leave Dad, not here in this icy grave, so I rushed along the deck and followed it around. Eventually, I came to the stern of the ship. There was a staircase there. I took it. I went down and found where the ship was open at the rear, where I had driven in with the sled, and I ran back inside, the way I had come earlier. Finally, I arrived at the room where I had left the sled and Dad’s body. Pulling the sled out, I opened its top and slipped in behind the controls and started it up and let the lights sweep before me. I drove back the way I had come, through the long corridor, to where those incredible red worms climbed the walls. I drove on, and as I did, I could hear ice cracking and there was starting to be water on the floor of the pyramid.

By the time I came to the mouth of the pyramid, the water was rushing in; and then it covered the sled as the iceberg sank, taking me down with it, pushing me back with the might of the sea.

As I said, the sled had submergible abilities. The lid was fastened tight. The lights cut at the dark water, but the problem was that I was still inside the mammoth berg, it was going down hurriedly, and the sea was darker down there. Ice was crashing all about and bits of it were sliding in through the gap I had made with the flares, banging against the sled like mermaids tapping to get in.

I levered it forward and bounced against the sides of the pyramid, fighting the power of the water with all the juice there was in my little machine. I saw a bit of light, the moons piercing the water, making a glow like spoiled milk poured on top of cracked glass. And then that light began to disappear.

I pushed on, and though I had some idea where the gap in the ice was, I had a hard time finding it. I couldn’t figure it. Then I realized that it had begun to ice over already; the creatures in the ice, they were sealing it up. I went for where I thought the gap had been, hit it hard with the nose of the sled. The sled bounced back. I went at it again, and this time I heard a cracking sound. I thought at first that it was the sled coming to pieces. But the lights showed me that it was the ice shattering. It was just a glimpse, a spiderweb of lines against the cold barrier. I hit it again. The sled broke through and the ice went all around me in slivers. Up and out I went. And then the lights began to blink.

The sled slowed. It drifted momentarily, started going back down into the jet black, following the descending pyramid and ship. I tugged back on the throttle and the engine caught again, and up I went, like an earthly porpoise. The sled shot up through a hole in the ice, clattered on the surface of the frozen water. The lights blinked, but they kept shining.

Tooling the sled out wide and turning, I headed in the direction of the dark bumps that were the Martian mountains.

For a moment, I felt invigorated, but then I began to feel weak. I thought it was food, and I was about to dig in the bag of goods, when I realized that wasn’t the problem at all. My shoulder was wet, but not with cold water, but with warm blood. The ice shark had hit me with one of its teeth, more than one. It had torn a gap in my shoulder that my adrenaline had not allowed me to notice until then.

I thought I might pass out, something I had been doing a lot of lately. I aimed the sled the way my head said go, the way the worm pill in my body said go. I dug in the bag and got out a first-aid kit, tore it open, found some bandages. I pushed them against the wound. They grew wet, through and through. I pulled them off and put on some more. Same thing. I let them stay, sticking damp to my flesh. I dug in the bag and found a container of water, something to eat in hard, chewy bar form. It tasted like sawdust. The water hit my throat and tasted better than any water I had ever drunk, cool and refreshing.

The sled was heading straight toward the mountains. Depending on how long the charge lasted, I should be there in about eighteen hours. I knew that as easy as I knew my name was Angela King. I knew that because Dad had taught me to judge distance. Beyond the mountains, on the Far Side, I had no idea how much more I would have to go. I was living what my dad had called a cheap romance. I had found a lost world of dead Martians encased by ice and busy microbes; I had fought a Martian ice shark with a harpoon and won. I had gone down in an iceberg, down into a deep, dark, cold sea; and now I was gliding along the ice, bleeding out. I knew I’d never make it as far as the mountains; I damn sure wouldn’t make it to the other side. If I didn’t die first, the engine on the sled would go, out of sun-juice. By the time morning came and the sun rose up hot and slowly charged the engine, I’d be a corpse, same as my dad. That was all right. I had done my best and I hadn’t quit. Not on purpose. I looked out once more at the moonlit ice and the rolling mountains. I laughed. I can’t tell you why, but I did. I lifted my head and laughed. My eyes closed then. I didn’t close them. They were hot and heavy and I couldn’t keep them open.

I reached out with the toe of my foot and touched Dad’s covered head, then I passed out. That was starting to be a habit, but I figured this would be the last time.

If you die on Mars, do you go to Martian Heaven? Did the old gold Martians have a heaven? I know I didn’t believe in one, but I was thinking about it because I seemed to be going there. Only I was starting to feel warm, and I thought, uh-oh, that’s the other end of the bargain, the hot part, Hell. I was going right on quick to Martian Hell, for whatever reason. I was going there to dance with big tall Martians carrying harpoons, dancing down below with the ice sharks and the other beasts that lived at the bottom of it all, dancing in lava pits of scalding fire. That wouldn’t be so bad. Being warm. I was so tired of being cold. Martian Hell, I welcome you.

Then I awoke. The sled was no longer moving. I was warm now and comfortable, and not long before I had been cold. It took me a moment, but finally I knew what had happened. The sled had quit going, and the heater inside had quit, and it had grown cold, and I had dreamed, but here I was alive, and the sun was up, and the sled had been pulling in the rays for a few hours now, heating up the solar cells, and it was roaring to warm, vigorous life. The throttle was still in forward-thrust position, and the sled began to move again without me touching a thing.

I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t dead. Glancing out at the ice, I saw the mountains, but I knew by the worm in my head that I had drifted off course a bit, though I had gone farther than I expected. Placing my hand on the throttle made my whole body hurt. My shoulder had stopped bleeding and the bandage I had made was nothing now but a wet mess. But it had done the job. I was careful not to move too much, not to tear too much.

Over the ice the sled fled, and I adjusted its navigation, kept it pointed in the right direction.

When I came to the mountains it was late afternoon. I began to look for a trail through them. My body was hot and I felt strange, but I kept at it, and finally I came to a little path that split through the mountains, and I took it. I went along smoothly and thought it would break up eventually, or suddenly a high wall of rock would appear in front of me, but it didn’t. The path wasn’t straight, but it was true, and it split through the mountains like a knife through butter.

It was nightfall again when I came to a larger split of land, and below me, where it dipped, was a valley lit bright with lights. Far Side.

Plunging down the slope, away I went, driving fast. It all seemed to be coming together, working out. I was going to make it just fine. And then in the head beams, a rock jumped up. I hit the throttle in such a way that the sled rose as high as it could go. For a moment, I thought I was going to clear the rock, but it caught the bottom of the sled and tore it, and the sled went crashing, spinning, the see-through cover breaking around me, throwing me out where the valley sloped off on a hill of wet winter grass. I went sliding, then something bumped up against me.

It was my father’s body. I grabbed at it, and the two of us were going down that hill, me clinging to him, climbing on him, riding his torso down at rocket speed.

Down.

Down.

Down we went, Dad and I, making really good time.

Until we hit the outside wall of a house. Hit it hard.

There’s not much to tell after that. Making it to my feet, I staggered along the side of the house and beat on a door. I was taken inside by an old couple, then the whole town was awake. People were sent up the hill to find the sled, to look for the vaccine, and my father’s body next to the wall. The sled was ruined, the vaccine was found, and my dad was still dead. People came in and looked at me as if I was a rare animal freshly brought into captivity. I don’t remember who was who or what anyone looked like, just that they came and stared and went away and new people took their place.

After the curious had gone, I sat in a chair in the old couple’s house, and they fed me soup. The doctor came in and fixed my wound as best he could, said it was infected, that I had a concussion, maybe several, and I shouldn’t sleep, that it was best not to lie down.

So, I didn’t.

I took some kind of medicine from him, sat in that chair till morning climbed up over the mountain as if it was fatigued and would rather have stayed down in the dark; and then I couldn’t sit anymore. I slid out of the chair and sat on my butt a long while, then lay on the floor and didn’t care if I died because I had no idea if I was dying or getting well; I just plain had no idea about anything at all.

Someone got me in a bed, because when I awoke that’s where I was. I was bandaged up tight and was wearing a nightgown, the old woman’s I figured. The bed felt good. I didn’t want to get out of it. I was surprised when the old woman told me that I had been there three days.

I guess what happens in those cheap romances Dad talked about is that they end in a hot moment of glory, with all guns blazing and fists flying, but my romance, if you can truly call it that, ended with a funeral.

They kept Dad’s body in an open barn, so the cold air would keep him chilled, protect him from growing too ripe. But in time, even that couldn’t hold him, and down he had to go, so they came and got me ready in some clothes that almost fit, and helped me along. The entire town showed up for the burying. Me and Dad were considered heroes for bringing the vaccine. Good words were said about us, and I appreciated them. Pretty much overnight, the whole place was cured because of that vaccine.

Hours after Dad was buried, I got the goddamn Martian fever and had to have the vaccine myself and stay in bed for another two or three days, having been already weak and made even more poorly by it. It was ironic when you think about it. I had brought the vaccine but had never thought to immunize myself, and neither had Dad, and he was a doctor.

I won’t lie. I cried a lot. Then I tucked Dad’s memory in the back of my mind in a place where I could get to it when I wanted, crawled out of bed, and got over it.

That’s what we Kings do.