Old Mars

It slammed against me then, cracking the shelf. The haft of the harpoon, which had been jerked from me, hit me between the eyes. Stars gathered up and filled my head. The shelf cracked more, then I fell and the stars dropped backward into the blackness.

When I awoke, I was on the shark, and it had gone flat, like a dish-rag. I got up slowly and looked about. Only its head was a mound, and I could see the harpoon sticking out of it like a unicorn horn.

The thing had spread out so much it filled the long hall and trailed all the way down it. I got up slowly and fell back against the wall by a porthole. I had, by accident, not by design, hit that apple between its eyes. I had tried repeatedly to do that without success; and then, due to fear, desperation, and happy accident, I had managed it.

I laughed. I don’t know why. But I laughed way loud.

Gathering myself—and let me tell you, at that point there was a lot to gather—I started looking for my sled. I went down the corridor, walking on the ice shark for a long way, and finally I came to another corridor, and that led to another. I realized I was getting more confused, so I backtracked the way I had come, and finally I came to where the Martian body had lain by the door but was now gone, consumed by the dead ice shark. I went out that door and along the deck of the ship, looked up at the porthole I had dropped out of. It was too high up to climb. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I felt the ship shift. Then shift again.

I assumed for a moment that the berg was merely moving, but when I looked past the bubble of ice that contained the ship, I saw that the frozen surface over the sea was cracking. The berg was about to settle again, way down in the deeps like an enormous stone. And I was trapped.

I couldn’t leave Dad, not here in this icy grave, so I rushed along the deck and followed it around. Eventually, I came to the stern of the ship. There was a staircase there. I took it. I went down and found where the ship was open at the rear, where I had driven in with the sled, and I ran back inside, the way I had come earlier. Finally, I arrived at the room where I had left the sled and Dad’s body. Pulling the sled out, I opened its top and slipped in behind the controls and started it up and let the lights sweep before me. I drove back the way I had come, through the long corridor, to where those incredible red worms climbed the walls. I drove on, and as I did, I could hear ice cracking and there was starting to be water on the floor of the pyramid.

By the time I came to the mouth of the pyramid, the water was rushing in; and then it covered the sled as the iceberg sank, taking me down with it, pushing me back with the might of the sea.

As I said, the sled had submergible abilities. The lid was fastened tight. The lights cut at the dark water, but the problem was that I was still inside the mammoth berg, it was going down hurriedly, and the sea was darker down there. Ice was crashing all about and bits of it were sliding in through the gap I had made with the flares, banging against the sled like mermaids tapping to get in.

I levered it forward and bounced against the sides of the pyramid, fighting the power of the water with all the juice there was in my little machine. I saw a bit of light, the moons piercing the water, making a glow like spoiled milk poured on top of cracked glass. And then that light began to disappear.

I pushed on, and though I had some idea where the gap in the ice was, I had a hard time finding it. I couldn’t figure it. Then I realized that it had begun to ice over already; the creatures in the ice, they were sealing it up. I went for where I thought the gap had been, hit it hard with the nose of the sled. The sled bounced back. I went at it again, and this time I heard a cracking sound. I thought at first that it was the sled coming to pieces. But the lights showed me that it was the ice shattering. It was just a glimpse, a spiderweb of lines against the cold barrier. I hit it again. The sled broke through and the ice went all around me in slivers. Up and out I went. And then the lights began to blink.

The sled slowed. It drifted momentarily, started going back down into the jet black, following the descending pyramid and ship. I tugged back on the throttle and the engine caught again, and up I went, like an earthly porpoise. The sled shot up through a hole in the ice, clattered on the surface of the frozen water. The lights blinked, but they kept shining.

Tooling the sled out wide and turning, I headed in the direction of the dark bumps that were the Martian mountains.