Old Mars

I eased in that direction and saw a long, massive leg poking out. When I went around and looked, there was one of the Martians. Golden and huge. Bigger than the others. His hands lay on a large wheel, and at his right, and on his left, were gears and buttons and all manner of devices, and beneath them were squiggle shapes that I figured were some kind of long-lost language.

I examined his face. His eyes were open, and he still had eyes. They had not rotted. They were frosted over, like icing on doughnuts. Part of his skin had fallen away in a few spots, and I determined this wasn’t from decay. It was from wounds that had been inflicted. He had been attacked while he sat in this chair. Perhaps trying to direct the ship to sea. On the wall to the far right was a row of harpoons like those I had seen earlier. They were on racks and I figured they were for show, maybe old, ceremonial weapons more than ones they might have used when their world went from top to bottom, from air to ice, but those blades looked mighty sharp and dangerous nonetheless.

It took some work, but I climbed on the control panel and looked out through the great view glass in front of the Martian and his chair. The moons were bright and there was a thin see-through icy barrier in front of the ship, and beyond it, more flat ice, and way, way off, the dark pattern of the mountains. It looked so far away, right then I felt sick to my stomach.

Then came a wheezing sound, a cracking of things, and I knew instinctively that the ice shark had followed me here. I’ll be honest. I thought the ice shark would quit. They can survive off the ice and out of the sea, but I didn’t know they could stay out so long—but sure enough, it was the shark; I could smell it. I couldn’t see it, but that odor it had was of things long dead in water, of all its recent meals come up in gassy bubbles from its stomach (stomachs, I’m told), and it had all oozed out in an aroma so bitter I felt as if my eyebrows were curling.

I went and stood on a counter in front of the rack that held the weapons and picked the smallest harpoon there. This one would have been really small in the hands of that seated Martian, a light throwing spear for him, but for me it was heavy yet manageable. I pulled the harpoon down, jumped to the floor and moved swiftly to the opening that led out, then I heard it coming down the hall. It was wheezing and slipping and sliding over that ship’s ancient floor, and it sounded near.

Back in the control room, I climbed up on the counter again. It ran along the wall and past the portholes. I hustled to one of the portholes and used the tip of the harpoon to pry at it. I worked hard, but it didn’t move. I could hear the ice shark coming, and its smell was overwhelming. Just when I thought that the thing was in the room with me, the porthole snapped beneath my prodding, popped completely out, and went shattering onto the deck below. I tossed the harpoon out, then lowered myself out of the hole and dropped about eight feet to the deck. I picked up the harpoon and hustled along the deck, trying to find my way to the room where I had left the sled and my poor dad’s body.

When I glanced back, that monstrous thing was easing out of the porthole like it was made of grease. When its dark head poked through, it ballooned wide again and the rows of teeth reassembled and tentacles popped from its head. Its bright white china-plate eyes turned toward me on a thin neck, which was swelling large as it eased out of the porthole. I knew then that it would never give up. I remembered my dad said: “The ice shark is a big booger, but it’s got a brain about the size of an apple. A small apple. It rests right between the bad thing’s eyes. That’s what makes it dangerous. That small brain. It doesn’t consider alternatives. It’s a lot like a lot of people in that respect. It makes a decision and sticks to it, whether it makes any sense or not. It finds its prey and it doesn’t give up until it eats it or it gets away.”

The shark’s head hit the deck with a plop, and it began to slither. As the rest of it came out of the porthole, it swelled, and tentacles popped from the rest of its gooey form and those little legs sprang out. What was coming out of the porthole was at least twenty times bigger than me.

For too long a moment, I was welded to that spot by fear; and then the spell broke. I think it was the stink that did it, struck me like a fist. I turned and ran along the deck. Behind me, the ice shark wailed so loud that my ears ached. I grabbed at a door that led inside. Locked. I tried another. More of the same.