Last Day on Mars by Kevin Emerson

Author:Kevin Emerson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-12-13T16:00:00+00:00

9

TIME TO RED LINE: 02H:04M

Liam scrambled to the skim drone and lunged for the towing handle.

“Hurry!” said Phoebe, dragging herself into the cockpit.

Liam unclipped his line and grabbed for Phoebe’s hand. She yanked him up, and he hauled himself in.

Metal creaked and whined. Glass smashed inside the observatory. The sphere tilted up onto its side, the top becoming a vertical wall, and with an earsplitting scrape of metal on rock, it began to fall.

“How do I start this thing?” Phoebe called, stabbing at buttons.

“Hold on a sec!”

“We don’t have a sec!”

Liam struggled to get situated as the world turned upside down. He managed to hit the canopy button. As it hummed closed, he reached over his shoulder and yanked the seat belt across his body. “Here, get this around you, too!” He thrust it toward Phoebe. She took it, and he braced his legs in the footwell, grabbed the joystick, and jabbed at the main power.

Rock crunched and splintered. They were falling fast, flipping upside down. Liam glanced up and saw the mountainside rushing at them. He fired the thruster . . . but they didn’t move.

“We’re still stuck to the roof!” said Phoebe.

“Got it!” Liam flicked off the magnetization and hit the thruster again. They shot free of the roof just as it crashed onto the mountainside. The world was still upside down in front of them. Liam banked hard and fired the lateral thrusters. They whipped around, right side up again, but angling hard toward the rocky slope.

“I’m gonna be sick,” said Phoebe.

“Almost there.” Liam pulled up and fired the main thruster at full power.

The skim drone slammed against the rocky slope, a wicked tearing sound beneath the craft. Everything shaking, skidding along, rocks and dust flying.

“Behind us,” said Phoebe, pointing at the rear camera.

The giant observatory sliding toward them, nearly on top of them.

Come on. Liam kept pulling up—

And then with a lurch, they shot into the sky.

Liam exhaled hard. He hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath. “Okay, I think we made it.”

“Nice flying,” said Phoebe, also out of breath.

“Thanks. It was mostly luck, I think.”

The craft flew with a little sideways shimmy, like it had a limp. A red light blinked on a schematic. One of the stabilizers was out, but Liam could keep it mostly straight.

He banked and swooped down the mountainside, pushing the craft to nearly full speed. It rattled and vibrated, but Liam didn’t back off.

As he flew, his eye strayed to the watch. Its blinking had slowed.

“I can’t believe what we just found,” said Phoebe. She played her video of the room back on her link. “Nobody’s going to believe it.” She rewound it and watched it again.

“Yeah,” said Liam. It had been so strange, so astonishing; it almost felt like a dream. Liam glanced at the rear camera. The observatory was just a silver dot. He looked out at the horizon, at the sky. There could be aliens anywhere.

But as the column of smoke grew in front of them, fresh fear began to boil over.

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