Down Among the Dust

The dust covered his boots. They said it must be like walking through snow, but the elders often talked of things that no longer existed. Safe in the ships exploring the galaxy, they had no real idea what their homeland had become after decades of blight, storms, and the very land cracking open to release noxious gases and unnamed creatures. Only desolation remained, every green thing scoured from the surface, all water boiled away. 

He stepped up on a rocky outcrop to study the path before him. Jagged shapes and crevices protruded from the sand, as though someone had taken a blanket and covered Doc’s worktables—a place of mysterious peaks and sudden valleys. Ocher, mahogany, char, rust, and burnt umber were the only colors left. Those, and the red haze cast by a crumbling sun, the one thing left alive of a bygone era.

He was told to reach the earth outpost and retrieve any remaining supplies. Don’t stop, don’t explore, don’t investigate unknown sounds, and hail the airship when he finished. Even after all his missions, they still felt the need to remind him of his job. But they had allowed all the Retrievers to plan their desired route while onboard Starship Five, the last ship stationed off earth.

Something chittered from behind him and he casually unholstered his rift gun. The sensors on his helmet showed no indication of a large life form, but Command didn’t pick him for these types of jobs because of his looks. Stepping off the outcrop and into the air, he activated the gravlite function on his boots and slowly sank down to the powdery ground. The wind calmed enough for him to hear the puffs and squeaks as he walked through the soft ground. 

The reading on his helmet estimated the temperature would reach three hundred in five hours; he had plenty of time before his suit reached the critical stage. He had to hand it to those scientists, they understood their assignment; he wasn’t even uncomfortably warm. Yet. They’d shut up when he asked what happened if the temperature rose too high. 

Shrugging off that concern, he scanned the nearest shape that could pass for a structure and received a list of its composites: iron, coal, corundum, basalt, quartz, feldspar…he stopped reading the list. Nothing interesting, or, more importantly, dangerous. 

The entrance of the outpost rested at the end of a ravine, a location chosen to protect it from the giant scorpions that still refused to die like all the other self-respecting creatures. He’d have to watch out for the spiked grubs and armored millipedes of the rocky warrens, but their approaches lacked subtlety.

He reached the ravine’s entrance and there, at head height, a rough plank of wood was nailed to the rock. The words “Paradise Lost” were vaguely visible. Someone had had a sense of humor. 

Scanning the trail behind him for any wayward surprises, he left the scarlet haze for the gray sootiness of the ravine. The temperature dropped fifteen degrees and he switched his helmet to dusk-vision, but the sensors only reported minerals and an uptick in various gases, the gauge on his screen fluctuating between “harmful” and “deadly” as he moved deeper into the ravine. The grubs and millipedes sent out tremors as they bored through the earth and he moved the screen’s seismic monitor to a more prominent spot on his helmet’s visor. 

The ground sloped down and soon he tread on an old lava flow, the walls cracked and pitted, the floor scattered with chipped basalt that resembled shattered vases. The Doc would’ve had a field day examining this tunnel; she never left the ship anymore because of her bad knees. Or that’s what she told him. He suspected she was terrified of setting foot on the planet—too many memories from when she was a child and part of the last colony of humans to leave earth. He stooped to grab a sample of the rocks and placed them in one of the canisters on his back. 

The temperature jumped up five degrees and he turned on the light attached to his gun. The seismic monitor pulsed once. 

They hadn’t given him any specifics of what to look for in the outpost as no one could remember what he might find. Batteries, note-screens, odd boxes, and anything that glowed were the usual possibilities. On a previous mission he’d found a small doll with a cone of green hair and jolly round eyes. That bought him a month’s wages. Maybe he could find something else from the older times. 

A pile of rubble blocked his path and after checking the clearance above the blockade, he activated the gravlite and leapt to the top, balanced for a moment while he surveyed the other side, then drifted down to the ground. The scientists might prevent him from roasting, but they were having trouble making boots that could handle tall drops or allow him to fly. He really wanted to fly one day.

The remainder of the trip passed with nothing more than a few unidentifiable bugs skittering close to his feet. By the time he reached the outpost’s door, an hour had elapsed since landing. The other Retrievers should’ve reached their destinations by now and with any luck, he’d be back on the ship before the evening meal of reconstituted lumps. He wanted real food more than he wanted to fly. The elders said food used to have distinct shapes and textures; apples were juicy and steaks tender. What a world that must’ve been.

The door to the outpost no longer opened with the touchpad so he removed a panel on the right, pulled the specialized metal bar off the door, and used it to lever the door sideways along its track. The door’s engineers had also understood their assignment. 

His helmet performed its scan for life signs and explosives but found nothing. The air was cleaner than outside but still a sweltering one hundred and ninety degrees. Briefly turning off his light revealed no glowing objects. He performed a systematic search of the single room, stuffing his mesh bag with batteries, old books, some outdated equipment like microscopes and scalpels, a box with a red cross, a few older note-screens, and a contraption of five silver balls suspended between two beams. It emitted no electrical readings, but it might be worth something. 

The seismic monitor twitched, then slowly rose into the yellow range. He activated the bag’s own gravlite function and it rose to hover a foot off the floor. He shoved it toward the spiral staircase leading to the ceiling’s exit hatch, placed one foot on the bottom step, and paused. On a table beside the steps was a framed picture, its glass cracked and dirty. Grabbing the picture and pushing the bag up the steps, he ascended to the closed hatch, one eye on the seismic reading and the other on the hatch’s wheel. He tucked the frame under his left arm and turned the wheel several times, pushing it open with a groan, from him and the hinges. The bag just fit through the opening and he quickly followed it and shut the hatch.

Temporarily blinded by the return of the red smog, he stopped all movement until his helmet’s vision switched to normal and he’d run a quick diagnostic of his surroundings. He appeared to be in a volcano crater full of skeletal remains from creatures unfortunate enough to think the place provided shelter. The beeps from the seismic monitor caught his attention and he kicked the bag into motion, the lumpy gray mesh bouncing off of every bone, rock, and petrified remnant on his way to the steep staircase carved into the crater wall.

The seismic reading swung into the orange and continued climbing. A slight tremor jostled the pebbles and shifted the sand. Backing up the steps, the bag bouncing off his back, he signaled the airship. The grub would arrive any moment; he set his gun to piercing rounds and stuffed the picture in the bag. 

He didn’t need to read the seismic activity to know the grub was close. A ribcage rolled away as the ground heaved upward and a hiss of steam shot out from the fissure, followed by a single glistening spike. The rocky ground cracked and folded back as the grub oozed out and flopped onto the sandy surface with a poof of dust. It rolled around to get its bearings, the arm-length spikes retracting and extending to help it maneuver. 

First time he saw the hideous thing he’d stared at it in shock. A humble garden grub now grown to the height of a man, twice as long and covered in black spikes, the creature seemed almost too horrible to be real. What he thought all those years ago hardly mattered; nowadays he shot first and retched later. 

Aiming for the spot directly behind its frontal spike, he shot two piercing rounds in quick succession. The rounds easily punctured the rubbery skin and burned their way out the back to leave the grub twitching. A moment later and it split open, the gooey insides slowly plopping to the ground. He turned away and set his sights on the crimson sun.

The scientists had finally concluded that the sun would be gone in another month or two. Whatever their reasons for its destruction mattered little to him. New colonies were already in the works on other planets. This place, this earth, held no special meaning for him; it was just a casualty of the past. 

The old volcano had a nice flat lip for him to stand on and allow the airship to transport him aboard with the new teleporting technology. It was early days yet for the tech but they’d gotten it to a place where they could teleport people into ships if they were close to the person. Putting people on planets still ended in crushed legs. But one day he wouldn’t have to spend time trekking over miles of terrain to get to his destination. What a day that would be.

Looking out across the desert, he saw a strange sight. One of the scorpions was standing still, its limbs twitching and its pincers limply grabbing at nothing. 

An alarm chimed in his helmet and he focused on the heat sensor. Two hundred and ninety. Damn. He hadn’t noticed, what with the grub’s appearance.

“Airship One, this is Retriever Three,” he said. “I’m reading dangerous levels of heat. How far are you from my location? Over.”

A reply crackled over his helmet’s comm link. “Retriever Three, this is Starship Five. We read your location but have been unable to contact Airship One or any of the other Retrievers. Our readings indicate that the…is accelerating…unprecedented rate…unable…” the transmission clicked and stopped.

He looked down at the scorpion. It was dead. 

The winds were increasing and he watched as dunes melted and reformed. The earth shook and geysers of gas erupted all around him. The light, so steady before, was growing brighter. 

Two ninety-eight. 

He reached into the bag and withdrew the picture. In the bright light he could see a couple with their three kids, all smiling, and standing on what must be the seashore. The shadows were different and he realized that must’ve been what the sunlight was like in the older days. 

Three hundred and seven.

No one was coming. He should feel terror and yet it all seemed perfectly normal. There was always the possibility he’d die on a mission. 

What would his friends think about him being abandoned here? The Doc would yell at all the technicians and claim they knew he was going to his death. The captain would never hear the end of it.

He smiled. The Doc wouldn’t forget him.

Three fourteen. He was getting hot now.

The ground beneath him buckled and he jumped on the floating bag and turned to face the burning, pulsing sun. Had the scientists said it would pull the earth closer? It seemed closer.

The wind pushed him away from the volcano, which looked ready to explode again: the inside was redder and the grub already charred.

Three twenty-six. The helmet’s display flickered, dimmed and disappeared. Too bad the scientists would never know how long the suit lasted. They might do better next time. Then again, they couldn’t even accurately predict when the sun would explode, and that was right in front of them!

But what did it matter? They were leaving. He looked up at the sky and for a moment the scorching clouds of dust parted and he saw the darkness of outer space. They were out there, somewhere, flying to a new home. 

He lifted his arm in silent farewell as the light grew brighter.