DARK SECRET
Edward M. Lerner
COPYRIGHT
Dark Secret Copyright © 2012 by Edward M. Lerner.. All rights reserved. This book may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise without written permission from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any actual persons, events or localities is purely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author and publisher.
Tarikian, TARK Classic Fiction, Arc Manor, Arc Manor Classic Reprints, Phoenix Pick, Phoenix Science Fiction Classics, Phoenix Rider, The Stellar Guild Series, Manor Thrift and logos associated with those imprints are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arc Manor, LLC, Rockville, Maryland. All other trademarks and trademarked names are properties of their respective owners.
This book is presented as is, without any warranties (implied or otherwise) as to the accuracy of the production, text or translation.
DARK
(Landing Day)
1
The wind howled.
Blake Westford crouched to the lee of the shuttle, struggling to maintain his grip on the not-yet-inflated shelter. Plastic sheeting billowed in the squall off the inland sea, and one by one the stones with which he had weighted the shelter’s corners rolled or bounced away. Every gust threatened to tear the flapping fabric from his hands. If it blew away, they would be sleeping in the cockpit.
“Almost there,” Rikki Westford shouted, her breather mask and the shriek of the wind muffling her words. The gale had stirred her long ponytail into one massive snarl. Two steel pegs had bent rather than penetrate the rock-hard ground. She was tying a guy rope to her third peg—and cursed as the wind once more whipped the rope from her hands. Finally, she got the line knotted. “That’s one.”
He grunted acknowledgment, saving his breath. Grit pelted him and skittered across the barren ground. Standing here, playing windbreak, had exhausted him, not that he had kept much wind off Rikki. His whole body ached. And flight-suit electrical heater be damned, he felt cold.
They had cut things close, landing late in the day when the temperature dropped and the winds tended to pick up. Not that anyone had any business yet speaking of tendencies here….
“Got another tied,” his wife shouted.
The sun was half-vanished beneath the sea by the time they finished anchoring the shelter. The compressor kicked on with a welcome roar.
Although the inflated structure jiggled in the wind like a bowl of Jell-O, by nightfall they, their hiking gear, and supplies for three days were settled inside. A portable heater had warmed the enclosed space almost to coziness. Their exertions done, they were able to shed their breather masks and eat a simple dinner.
He sidled across the shelter floor to put an arm around Rikki. Her face was drawn, her hair still a tangled mess. “A good day’s work,” he said.
She snuggled closer. “A long day’s work,” she answered.
He was tired, too. Exhausted, in fact. But they had not been alone together since…it seemed forever. Not since Mars.
Perhaps she had the same thought. With her free hand, she flicked off the shelter’s glow strip. Starlight and moonlight streamed through the clear fabric of the shelter—
And the moment passed.
The sort-of crescent overhead rivaled the Moon, but there could be no confusing the two satellites. This body was lumpy, potato-shaped, and not massive enough to have collapsed into a sphere. Only its close orbit made it seem large. A second body, looking almost as big, hung beside the first. A brilliant dot, brighter than Venus, was this world’s third, outermost moon. Nothing—not the constellations, or the spill of the Milky Way, or the splotches of dark nebulae—was familiar.
Remembered skies served as standards of reference, if nothing else.
Rikki was trembling. He said, “We don’t know that everyone is gone.”
“Don’t we?” she whispered. “Why else are we here?”
To which there was no answer. And so, beneath an alien sky, as the wind screeched and moaned, they huddled together in shared melancholy.
*
A dusting of snow had fallen while they slept, but the morning sun quickly burned it off. The wind had faded. After a quick breakfast they began prepping for their hike.
“Oh-two,” Rikki read off her checklist. She looked better for having slept.
“Two full tanks each,” he said, peering into the open knapsacks. One should be more than ample.
“Masks.”
“Ditto,” he said.
The shelter would be here waiting for them when they came back down the hill that afternoon; everything else they would carry. Water bottles, ration packets, radio headsets, smart specs, batteries, first-aid kits, cleats and collapsible hiking poles, rope, flashlights and flares, hats and gloves, emergency thermal blankets, hammers and pitons, folding shovels, cameras, sample bottles…the list seemed endless. Rikki caught him shifting a part of her gear to his knapsack and took everything back. “I carry my own weight,” she snapped.
Only, unlike Blake, she was Martian born and bred. Merely standing here, she carried four times her accustomed weight. And he could do nothing about that. He tipped his head back to kiss her. “Sorry,” he said.
Knapsacks on their backs, in sturdy boots, flight-suit thermostats at the ready, headsets on, breather masks dangling by elastic straps on their chests, they exited the shelter. The breeze off the water smelled vaguely of mold, citrus, and salt. It wasn’t offensive, just strange.
Apart from scattered dirty snowdrifts, the landscape was all sepias and charcoal grays. The sky had a somber green tinge, except near the horizon where a haze of dust contributed hints of pink. The sun glowered a sullen orange-red, and the barren landscape drank up that feeble excuse for illumination. There was a reason they called this world Dark.
Blake wondered if they could learn to call it home.
Tidal pools dotted the beach. Except for things like algae mats, spongy bits, and fronds like kelp, the pools appeared lifeless. He saw nothing more animal-like than the spongy bits. They collected samples, from pools and the slow, rolling combers alike. Even if the local biota
