LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Maybe. I don’t know for sure. It’s not as cut-and-dried as that, Alex. I’d need a focus of some kind.”

      “Use me,” I said. “They’ll be worried about me, thinking about me, concerned about communications being severed. Use me as the link.”

      “I’ll try,” she finally said. “We’ll need to go somewhere private. There’s a storage room near the north entrance to Barrack 16. It’s empty right now, and is being used off and on as an area for couples to meet—even now, there’s not much of a place that anyone can be alone for long in this complex. Meet me there in forty minutes. With any luck, we’ll have the solitude we need. In the meantime, I have to gather a few things from my room.”

      I agreed.

      * * * *

      It wasn’t hard to find the metal-walled bunker she’d described. It was lined with shelves, now mostly bare, awaiting the resupply ships arriving in the next few weeks—with a few plastic crates turned on end to serve as makeshift seats. They weren’t comfortable, but at least they were available.

      Nomsah was late. I was beginning to wonder if she’d actually show up when she finally appeared.

      “Sorry,” she said. “I needed to find the right implement. I haven’t done this sort of thing since we landed, and they don’t allow candles or open flames of any kind within the environment.”

      I raised one eyebrow in question. I never did like the mumbo-jumbo associated with her profession.

      She saw my expression. “Yeah, I know, it’s all a bit of a charade, isn’t it, but some of it seems to be essential to the process. I basically need to hypnotize you, Alex, so you can act as medium to the message.” She held up a small flashlight. “This will have to do.

      “Sit down, please. Now, I’m going to turn this to its lowest setting, and I want you to follow the light as I move it slowly back and forth. Let yourself relax. Purge your mind of everything except the lamp. Let the light into yourself. Feel yourself giving way to the light. Relax. Relax. Let yourself go. You feel rested. Your eyes are closing, slowly, very slowly. Breathe in deeply and rhythmically. Relax. Rest.”

      And then I felt my will gradually ebbing away into a sea of contentment. The stress of the last few days faded into the background.

      “Can you hear me?”

      I could, but as through a fog. Everything seemed muted to me. Everything was subdued. It was as if I were an observer standing to one side, watching the tableau unfold. I was there—and yet I wasn’t.

      “I want you to form a picture of Becky in your mind. It’s a happy image, a good time, a place where you and she were thinking and feeling the same things together. Do you have that portrait before you now?”

      I did. It was Mellie’s last birthday—her thirteenth—and we were celebrating with a private party, just the four of us. Even two-year-old Buddy seemed to understand what was going on. He was laughing in that strange little way that he had, almost a gurgle, and Becky was laughing along with him as Mellie opened her gifts. I could see them so clearly that it was almost as if they were here in front of me, that I could reach out and kiss my dear wife again, just as I did then, just as I did…now!

      “Alex!”

      “I’m here,” I said. “Listen to me, Becky. Take the children and leave. Use any excuse, but you must leave the Habitat immediately and find refuge in the Deep Zone”—I knew there were Martian “hives” located far below the surface, although I’d never been allowed to visit any of them.

      “Why?”

      “It’s war again, and the damned generals are going to start bombing everything in sight within tomorrow—or possibly sooner. Get out of there now! Promise me!”

      “I will,” she said. “But what about you?”

      “Don’t worry, I’ll survive. I always have. It’s the ones around me who have to worry.”

      Then I kissed her again—mentally or whatever. It felt like the real thing. It might have even been the real thing.

      “Now go!” I said.

      “I love you,” she said, as she pulled away and faded into the distance.

      “And I love you, dearest,” I whispered—but I don’t know if she heard.

      Then I was back again, drifting in the fog.

      “You’ll remember everything that’s happened to this point, Alex,” Nomsah said, “but nothing hereafter. Now, old friend, tell me everything you know about Big Guy.”

      * * * *

      The next thing I knew, I was sitting in the HQ Council Chamber again right across from General Burgess, watching the wallscreen as the Indefatigable maneuvered around Phobos so that it had a clear shot at the planet revolving below. We had views from both the Moonbase and from the ship itself.

      “Commence firing,” I heard Vice Admiral Rayma Bruce say.

      “Launch missiles,” Captain Jacques ordered.

      “Missiles launched,” another officer said. (The military is redundant like that.)

      Twenty minutes later, the first of the weapons tore into a Martian hivepit and destroyed it and everything surrounding it within a five-mile radius and to a depth of several thousand feet. The bombardment continued for hours as each known alien base was systematically pulverized and rendered harmless.

      Sometime after noon the Admiral ordered the offensive terminated, and came on screen.

      “General Burgess, any activity down there?”

      “None, sir,” he said. “Everything’s quiet at Isis Station.”

      “Excellent. Maintain your vigilance until otherwise ordered.”

      And that was that.

      “Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far.”

      I just wondered when the Martian night was going to start blasting its cold breath back at us.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      THE ZERO ZOMBIES

      But never meet this Fellow,

      Attended or alone

      Without a tighter breathing

      And Zero at the Bone—

      —Emily Dickinson

      Alex Smith, 17 Bi-October, Mars Year viii

      Isis Station, Planet Mars

      The answer came at midnight. I was yanked from a wild dream by the sound of a klaxon, and an order for all Council members to report to HQ immediately.

      I threw on the same clothes I’d been wearing this last week, and hurried off to war. My drowsiness was banished immediately upon entering the room.

      “A hit!” said the anonymous voice.

      On the wallscreen I could see the Indefatigable being struck by…something, and the silent explosion that followed.

      “Phobos Base, power down your weapons!” someone screamed.

      And then I realized what was happening: one of the batteries on the moon was attacking the flagship of the fleet!

      I saw another laser beam or missile strike the vessel, visibly knocking a large hole in its side. Atmosphere was obviously venting, along with several crewmen and debris.

      “He’s barricaded himself in the bunker,” Commodore Wanders said. “We have to blow it, but we can’t do anything until we evacuate the section first.”

      “Blow it!” the Admiral’s voice said.

      “Aye, sir.”

      But it was too late.

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