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This Thing of Darkness

august 11, 2032

Right oot. Let oot. Right oot. Let oot.Stumble.

Red dirt flled Burke’s feld o view. Not that it was much o a change.

Red dirt had been all he could see or hours. Even the bright pinkishtan o the planet’s sky was washed away by the windstorm.

“Beech!” he called out, hoisting himsel back to his eet as the wind

spun him about. He carried a small black pack with a few meager

supplies and some mission equipment inside. “I’ve got zero visibility! No orientation! I can’t see anything!” He stopped.

Burke’s training fought against the fear creeping into his mind,

Robin PaRRish

against the rising panic as the wind ed more soil and dust into the crevices o his space suit.

Got to nd my way . . . dirt’s building up . . . soon I won’t beable to move. . . .

“Habitat, this is Burke!” he yelled over the storm. “I can’t see any-thing, and I’ve lost contact with Beechum!” No answer. A brutal gust surged around him like the gale orce o a hurricane, threatening to pick him up o his eet. He crouched tocenter his weight, slung the pack over his back, and took a steadying breath.

“Houston?” he tried halheartedly. There was little chance the relay

satellite orbiting above would pick him up i the rest o his own teamcouldn’t hear him rom less than a hundred miles away. “Is anyone reading me?”

No reply, not even static. The earpiece inside his helmet was

dead.

Okay, Chris. Think. You’re in the middle o a dried-up riverbedthat we’ve been studying or weeks. You know your way around thisplace. Think about landmarks. What’s nearby?

The wind cleared just enough or him to catch a glimpse o a red

boulder, directly ahead of his position. Burke crawled forward, on

hands and knees, and stooped there in the shadow o the large rock torest and think. Fighting the dust storm had required all o his strength,every muscle ready to crumple rom the eort. He brushed aside the deep red dust on his right arm and uncovered an electronic readout on the underside. It read 5:08

Which meant he had about four hours of oxygen remaining in

his suit.

And worse, nightall would come in less than an hour. Martian days were just thirty-nine minutes longer than days on Earth, so sunrise and

sunset were virtually the same on the red planet as on the blue one.

So . . .

he thought

Lost on the surace o Mars, unable to reach