We were not going back

Second Place, edited and expanded on.

“You ready?”  What a stupid question. Dr. Cross was always asking stupid questions.  And yet he asked it anyways. 

“Of course I am. Let’s go.” How could I not be?  We’d been cooped up inside of this ship for 7 months, just the crew. They’d been able to ration food and supplies for eight people. Four men, four women. And now we were here. The surface of Mars. We were going to be the first human beings to ever step foot on the red planet. 

We drew straws weeks ago to decide who’d go first. Only one could fit through the door, so the others had argued about who would get “the honor” of being the first one. To be totally honest, I didn’t really care. I got to step foot on mars. I didn’t particularly care if someone’s fat behind happened to be in front of me, or if another was getting a view of my better side. I just wanted to be there. And I finally was. 

Captain Stewart started to unlock the door. She was the Captain, but she’d been assigned the position more than anything else back in training. A few of the others were offended, as they wanted it, but it didn’t really matter to me. She was experienced. More experienced than I was, so I certainly had no claim to supremacy. And as we progressed through training and the trip so far, she certainly fit the task. I suppose others might’ve done fine as well, but Captain Stewart certainly got a seal of approval from me. 

I looked at the tinted screen on her mask. She had blond hair, and bright green eyes, but I couldn’t see any of that. I couldn’t see anyones face anymore, and probably wouldn’t for a while. Our ship's oxygen filter had broken a few days ago and we’d been in our full suits since. Cross had looked at it a few times, but gotten nowhere so far.

Dr. Maya Harrison was our agriculturalist, and the lucky one who’d been designated to go first. Captain stepped aside and we all watched eagerly as she leaped out of the ship onto the rough surface. She landed gracefully and raised her arms victoriously. 

Despite how little I cared about the order of exiting the ship, I was second in line. As soon as we were all done cheering for Dr. Harrison I jumped out myself. I walked up to her and gave her a high five and we both turned around. One by one, everyone exited the ship until there were eight people standing in a lazily organized semicircle, waiting for our orders from our Captain. 

“Well, we have about 10 hours of sunlight left, so now is a good time for us to just, explore and look around a little bit. Don’t wander too far, and make sure any pictures you take get to Dr. Cross.” James Cross was our resident technology guy. Anything and everything related to technology went to and through him first. I didn’t like him. But he was extremely good at what he did and we needed him dearly, so I maintained positive vibes with him.

She started to say some other things to the scientists, but I tuned her out. That stuff didn’t really concern me. They were all highly intelligent individuals with years of training and experience. They had research and collecting to do, and pictures to take. I might help them when asked, but none of that really mattered to me.

I had two jobs, and neither of them were particularly relevant to the instruction the captain was giving. My secondary duty was assisting Dr. Reid in maintaining the exercise regime and facilitating food and diets. I really had no formal training in that area of study, but Dr. Reid insisted that he needed a second pair of hands, and we were friends, so why not? But that would be more of a hobby that anything else, because that wasn’t my main job.

I was an engineer, and thus in charge of putting together and maintaining the facility, along with Dr. Reid. I also needed a second pair of hands, so together we made an odd, but necessary duo.

 Designing the facility was a difficult issue. It was actually what the bulk of my training was dedicated to addressing. I’d have training on how to live in space, but also work on figuring out how to get a large facility that houses eight people to Mars. It has to have food, the garden, water, storage, sleeping areas, energy, some amount of entertainment, and loads of scientific equipment I probably couldn’t even turn on. But, we managed to figure it out. 3 weeks of assembly that would put Ikea to shame would be in my future. Oh, and taking apart our ship and reusing its parts. 

That was the caveat of this whole mission. It was why only about 50 people on Earth had expressed interest in going to Mars. It was why of the eight of us, no one was married. 6 of us were only children. All of our parents had passed away. 

We were not going back.

I worked for NASA, but had never been particularly interested in doing any space missions. I suppose I had as a child, but who doesn’t want to be an astronaut when they’re young? Regardless, something about going to Mars just captivated me like nothing else. I had no wife, no family, few friends outside of work. So why not?  We would have satellites, and the internet, so it's not like we would be completely cut off from Earth. 

Twenty years ago, having the internet in space might’ve seemed pretty far fetched, but it wasn’t twenty years ago. It was 2114. We’d pretty aggressively been addressing the problem for a while. We knew any expedition to Mars would have to have communication back home. I really only assisted with the tail end of the project, but they’d whipped up a powerful enough satellite.

“Cunningham, did you hear me?” I heard and felt a powerful tapping on my helmet. I looked at the name tag. The Captain had just said something and I wasn’t paying attention at all.

“Uh, no, not really, I assumed it was directed at the research crew” I replied somewhat sheepishly. Captain Stewart was nice, but did not appreciate it when we weren’t listening. 

“Well, you assumed wrong. I want you and Dr. Reid to have a meal ready in 3 hours. After that I want you start with anything related to setting up the garden. We need to start growing food as soon as possible. We can sleep on the ship for a few more days” I nodded and acknowledged her request then turned around. 

I was looking for Dr. Harrison, as the garden and greenhouse involved her, but I couldn’t see her. It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d been 2 feet away however, because I was looking at took my breath away. Somehow I’d avoided really taking in the landscape thus far.

It was red. Very red. Nothing but red for as far as I could possibly see. The golden hue of my helmet combined with the sun glowing on the red surface mixed for a glistening red orange expanse as far as I could see. I could see red dust and pebbles blowing across the surface in the wind I’d never feel. There were rocks of all sizes as far as I could see, and squinting my eyes hard only revealed more in the distance,, and I could see the craters and caves hiding behind them. It was extraordinarily beautiful, but looking around, for the first time, it fully dawned on me what I’d done.

This was my life. This planet. This suit. Listening to Captain Stewart ordering me around all day, and only communicating with others from this headset. I would be on Mars for the rest of my life. It suddenly freaked me out a little more than it had in the past, but I also had a similar “coming to” moment the first few months on the ship. I’d be okay, I knew I would. Still, I desperately wanted to take my helmet off, but I couldn’t.

We didn’t know why, but for some reason the ships air filter system had stopped working within the last few days of our flight. This gave us a variety of problems, and we all shared an unspoken understanding of what the consequences of them were. First of all, we were supposed to take out the ships filter system and use it in our facility. We’d thought we were so ingenius, taking apart the ship and building a facility out of it, but when the ship breaks, suddenly we look like idiots. Actually, scratch that, we looked more like sitting ducks than anything else. 

Mars and Earth have different orbits, so a trip to Mars is only actually possible every two years. So thats how long we would be waiting for the first supply ship to come. Did we have enough suit filters to last that long? Maybe, but if we’re using them 24/7, they were gonna burn out a lot quicker. 

So many people had refused to consider coming on this trip because we couldn’t yet be self sufficient and would rely on supply ships every 26 months. What happens if one can’t get off in time? Or crashes at launch? Or one of any million unforeseen possibilities happens. Taking these risks into consideration, it was decided that if they could find willing volunteers, it would be worth it to take the risk. I really hadn’t cared about all of that, until now. I thought we’d have food and air, so we’d be okay no matter what. Until now. Now I was kind of worried.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and saw Dr. Reid.

“How are you doing?” He asked me. I could hear that grin he always had on his face in the way he spoke. Dr. Reid was the most optimistic person I’ve ever met. Maybe that was why I liked him so much. I needed that optimism with me constantly. 

“Fine, just a little freaked out about the air filters.” I had tried again and again to stop worrying about it, but no matter what I tried, it always eventually crept back into my minds field of vision. 

  “Hey, now that we’re landed and have time to pull it apart fully, I’m sure Dr. Cross will be able to fix it. We had a limited scope of influence when the whole thing was locked away inside the ship.” He was right. He’d told me that a million times. Cross had told me that a million times. Captain had told me that a million times. But I still was a little jitterey about it. He turned and beckoned me to follow him to explore. I followed, hoping it would take my mind off things. 

Everything on this planet was the same. The landscape was almost copy and pasted everywhere, but it was still interesting. The craters were deep and interesting, the caves seemed deep and dark, but we couldn’t explore them as of yet. Not without ropes, or lights, or any number of equipment we didn’t have.

After a while we headed back to the ship. We still had an hour and half or so, but we wanted a jump on everything. We started unloading all of the stuff relevant to us from the ship. Dr. Reid pulled out a table, a plethora of food items, and his little dietary calendar. I peeked over his shoulder at the meal docket for today. Sandwiches. Delicious.

Captain Stewart said she wanted food first and foremost, so I started setting up the greenhouse. It made sense. We could start growing food tonight, and I didn’t have to take apart the ship for it. It was basically a tent in some boxes I had to set up. It wouldn’t be too hard.  

I started drilling everything in place, and pulling out the walls, and unfolding the floors, and putting together the boxes. I grabbed the lights, and the generators, and the large tarp to cover everything. Putting everything together helped calm me quite a bit. I was in my element, and I was comfortable. I was relaxed.

 Its become my most cherished memory, because I would soon never find such relaxation again.

After getting all my stuff out, I began to help Dr. Reid with his sandwich making. I took one and put it in the slot on my chest and heard a small whooshing at it got pushed into my helmet. I started biting away at the sandwich my helmet held in front of me as I started spreading Reids special concoction of jams on the bread. He pumped it full of some dietary supplements that were disgusting, but I was used to it by this point.

As I was eating I heard a very panicked voice. It was unmistakably Dr. Julian Moss. She was our geologist. I was under the impression she’d been collecting rock samples, a fairly laid back task, and her panic worried me immediately. 

“We have a very, very, big problem.” What a uselessly worrying statement. I couldn’t comprehend what problem we could have outside of our equipment and supplies, of which we were all aware. I kept munching away while spreading the peanut butter on another sandwich when she said it again.

“I’m serious you guys, I need everyone here NOW!” That made me jump. I looked at the little screen on my arm. I saw the little blue “JM” for “Julian Moss” in relation to my own “WC” for “Warren Cunningham” and began to go to it. I beckoned to Dr. Reid and he waved his hand.

“Moss is a bit kooky, you know that. It’s probably nothing.” She was an oddball, and it could have been nothing, but she sounded urgent. I started over towards her little blinking dot and about 10 minutes later I found her in a cave. I saw 6 bodies standing around, looking at something on the floor. I couldn’t see anything behind the wall of suits. 

“What's wrong?” I inquired, now quite worried. As though I was Moses, they immediately all separated and I saw what they were looking at. And my throat dropped into my stomach.

 I often wonder what would’ve happened if I had stayed with Dr. Reid. What would have happened if we contently made our sandwiches and ignored her. What if at any point on my little stroll, I had realized he was right. Or if when I saw my companions all standing in a circle, beckoning me to come see, if I had simply said “I’m not falling for your jokes” and had left. What things could I have done, what words could I have said that could have maybe extended that ignorance. But my wondering and wishing was useless, Because I had looked. They pointed, I looked, and I haven’t slept since.

It was a body. An old body. 

To say I was confused would be an understatement. I couldn’t even comprehend what I was looking at.

“How? What? That's impossible” were the only words that escaped my lips, and I stuttered all the way through them. I tried to say something - anything else, but I couldn’t. No one else said anything, and behind the tinted masks of the others I assumed there were some similar reactions going on. This was impossible.Without saying anything, Dr. Moss lifted up the arm of the body and pointed to something on the shoulder that only confused me more.

I was looking at a Soviet Flag, with ”MCMLXV in gold letters printed below it. 1965. If this was to be trusted, this body had been here for at least 150 years. Long before any kind of expedition would have been possible. And before man had even stepped foot on the moon.

“That's before the moon landing. Why would a successful expedition to mars go unreported by the Soviet Union? If they had revealed this, they would’ve won the space race.” I had finally found some composure, but the only questions I had couldn’t be answered by any of us, so it didn’t really matter. 

I kneeled and flipped the body over and found only more questions. Every new bit of information provided me with more of those. His helmet had been loosened and I lifted it. I stared into the cold, lifeless eyes of a young man, probably 26 or 27, not much younger than myself. Bodies don’t really decompose on Mars because of the cold, and being in an airtight suit had only helped preserve this poor man, leading to me looking him in the eyes nearly 150 years after his death.

“He probably died from asphyxiation.” I turned around and Dr. Hogan was stepping forward. He was the head researcher. The man had like 3 PhDs, and it was a literal miracle they’d convinced a man of his caliber to come. 

“His throat feels like pudding” I noted, feeling his incredibly squishy neck, as opposed to the rest of his surprisingly well preserved body. The rest of the crew had obviously began to take his suit off, as his boots had been removed, along with some of the outer layer of his primitive suit. His hands were both fully exposed and felt lifeless, but solid. 

“So who killed him? There’s got to be others around here somewhere. Maybe in some cave nearby or something.” I had stood up by now. Initially I was still quite uneasy, but I was slowly coming to grips with this. Not completely, but I was getting there. 

“Well? Anything else? Or just our friend here?” There was no reply. I looked around at everyone standing quietly, and I couldn’t see their averted eyes, but I could feel them. 

“We found this in his backpack. He had this and nothing else.” Dr. Hogan offered me a book that I recognized immediately as a journal. I flipped through it and saw pages and pages of Russian. The writing went for most of the book, and near the end I saw a page which had something written in extremely large letters across the page, then nothing else written in the book. Whatever this final entry was, it was obviously something he wanted future readers to know. 

“Where is Dr. Reid, its really quite important that we’re all here for this” Captain Stewart said, pulling me out of my dazed state. 

“He’s making sandwiches. He didn’t think it’d be important enough to leave”  I murmured, still flipping through the pages of the book, looking for anything else at all. I looked at the beginning date - 5/17/65, and compared it to the last page with a date, 1/03/66. Not even 8 months. Assuming they had the standard 7 month trip, whoever did this to him did it pretty much upon arrival. 

“So, what are your thoughts? Cabin Fever that exploded once they got here? Maybe some natural causes?” I asked to the group. This could easily have been done by another human, but something felt off. I think from the beginning I knew in my heart that was wishful thinking.

Dr. Cross recommended we bring all of this back to the ship, where we could meet up with Reid and hopefully be safe and near our supplies while we figured this all out. We all agreed that was a pretty logical course of action and set out, dragging behind us the body of this nameless Soviet. 

We had beautifully clever little radios. For close distance, we could simply speak as normal, as we had a Mic and Speakers in and outside of our suits. It sounded as though we were in the open air. However, we also had a radio that could broadcast to all eight of us. It was this that Dr. Moss used to beckon to us, and it was this that we all used to demand any sign of life from Dr. Reid - demands that were not being granted.

As we came in view of the ship I started running as fast as one could in the gravity of Mars, towards the table Dr. Reid had been making his sandwiches on. They were neatly stacked in piles with little cards denoting each individuals lunch. But still no sign of life. 

Frantically, I looked around and around, and came up empty with each reassessment of the land around me. I ran over to my unfinished greenhouse, each of its boxes and screws undisturbed. 

“Dr. Reid, WHERE ARE YOU?” I pleaded into my headset, but there came no reply. I had no where to go, and no conclusion to come to, and just as I was about to have a breakdown, I heard some clanking from inside the ship and a voice.

“Oh my hell, what is wrong with you people? I was looking for the crap to set up the internet, I thought I’d get a jump on that so we could get in touch with Earth” I could feel the annoyance in his voice, but I was just relieved he was alive. 

“Why didn’t you respond?” Came the equally annoyed voice of Captain Stewart. 

“Well first of all, I was inside this metal tin, and you were far away, so it was cutting out and I couldn’t even tell what was going on. Second of all, I was looking through boxes of all the s**t we got, my hands were kind of full” He set one box down on the ground beside another that were in fact, the internet equipment.

“Well, we need to finish setting it up ASAP, because we actually need it.” Captain Stewart seemed to have relaxed a bit, and I for one, was relieved that we had all been panicking for nothing. We related our findings to Dr. Reid as we set up the internet towers and our computer, and generator. The tower was pretty large and it took all of us to put it together and hoist it up. All in all, it took about 40 minutes to put everything together. 

With baited breath we booted up the Computer and waited for it to tell us it had successfully connected to the internet, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief when something finally had gone our way.

We watched anxiously as our video call rang, while Dr. Cross had started scanning some pages from the journal. After what felt like an eternity, someone finally picked up. It was a young girl, who couldn’t possibly have been older than 23 or 24. 

“We need someone who speaks Russian, immediately.” Was Stewarts nervous demand. The young girl seemed shocked at such a strange request, and maybe not fully comprehending it, attempted to strike up a conversation.

“How are things going so far? Are you all getting settled in alright?” Each question was asked in between a plethora of yawns. It was getting dark here, the sun was almost getting to set below the red horizon. It would’ve been the middle of the night where she was.

“Do you speak Russian? Because if you don’t I don’t want to talk to you right now.” Captain was getting louder, and the young girl could sense it. She picked up a phone next to her and started talking to someone on the other end. 

“Yes, she claims its very urgent… well, right now, sir… Well I don’t know… ” She talked for a few more seconds and then hung up. Immediately she made another phone call. More broken conversation. “yes, as soon as you can be here” she finished. She turned to us and let out a huge yawn and rubbed her eyes some more. 

“Alright, someones coming, he’ll be here in about 15 minutes, he lives pretty close and traff-“

“Get these documents ready for him to read” Stewart interrupted, completely dismissing any input this poor girl had to give. She emailed the girl the last 5 pages and made sure they were up on the screen and ready to be interpreted. 

By this point, she’d given up on trying to make conversation, picking up on the urgency in Captain Stewarts voice. We waited in silence for another few minutes until a man walked in, still wearing his pajamas. 

“Stewart, what the hell do you want, its 3:00 in the morning.” I was shocked to be listening to a man who was just as annoyed as Stewart at something. 

“Read” Came Stewarts reply. The man adjusted his glasses and looked at the screen and started peering over it. 

“Is this some kind of joke? Did you guys really need to do this right now?” He looked at the screen and suddenly my heart started thumping. I was too afraid to say anything, and for once, I think Captain Stewart was too. 

“What does it say” she asked quietly. 

“Well, it appears to be some astronaut describing some creature attacking his crew. They got here, all was good for a few days, then it started “attacking” them one by one. Very funny. I’m going back to sleep.”

“What else does it say?” She asked, her voice slightly louder, but much more nervous now. Suddenly the man didn’t look so dismissive. He swallowed nervously and flipped to the last few pages and skimmed it over. 

“It looks whatever it was got into their ship, so he hid out in a cave.”

“What about the last page?” I piped up. “There was something there that seems to be pretty urgent” He sighed deeply and looked at the last page. 

“It says” He laughed awkwardly and looked at us. No one said anything. “It just says, “they come at night”, but look you guys, whoever wrote this, had to be joking. They just had to be. There have been rovers on Mars for over 100 years. Theres absolutely no way there could be any kind of life form like that that we wouldn’t have noticed.” 

He continued his rambling train of thought that I think we’d all gone through to justify this at some point. But it didn’t change the fact that we had a body here, and something had to happened to him. I turned and looked at the sun for a few more seconds as the last sliver of light began to dip below the surface.

Suddenly, we all heard a bloodcurdling scream off in the distance. Any sliver of hope I had left, died instantly. I went into shock instantly. More screams joined in with every passing second. I looked around for a source and saw it:

 A huge, humanoid creature, emerged from a cave maybe 100 feet away, .  It was easily 10 feet tall, had arms down to its waste and 3 fingers at each end. Each finger went down another 6 inches. Seeing this only by the light illuminated by our ship, I could see no other discernible features. It threw its large head back and added to the cacophony of screams all around us. 

After another 30 seconds of this, the screams slowly died out. The one nearer to us had been turned away from us, but now rotated its body to face. 

“Where were those hiding? How have we never seen those before?” Someone started asking questions that had no answers, and I couldn’t really focus enough to discern who. Hunching over, the large creature slowly started walking towards us, and eventually sped up into a gallop. It got closer and closer, and I could see it less with each step as the sun finally dipped away into darkness. 

We were not going back. 

Author's Note

I started editing "Second Place", and ended up changing a ton, and writing a lot more. I wanted to upload both for some comparison, and try and figure out which version/tone I should go with. I added more dialogue and changed the ending too.

Fair warning, this version is quite a bit longer.