Planet Red
Far distant in the sky a small, blurry but bright yellow dot was in a hurry to touch the horizon. Its last warm rays for the day were fading away. From the other end an affluent blue with countless sparkly stars was blanketing the sky. Evenings bought a chill that would make the bones hurt. Though protected in the suit she could still feel the harsh cold waves spreading in thin air. The long tiring day was coming to an end. Drained of strength and energy, exhausted she sat on the rock. Around her stretched vast barren unfamiliar land of red sand. She could hear the sound of silence. The feeling of deep buried loneliness, wriggled its way in her heart. Drastically reducing temperatures were not helping the situation either. She was lost in the trance of the bewitching site and marveled at the creation of the universe. On a regular day this serene beauty would have been shot for sending back home… but not today.
A sudden familiar beeping sound of oxygen tank made her heart sank, bringing her back to reality and million thoughts pierced her mind with worries.
Aradhya let out a deep sigh and tried to recall her memories. Memories always helped, they were full of warmth, affection and love. Back home she was always surrounded with people, lots of people. She took solace thinking about her last days back there. Silently wondering weather she will be able to walk on her blue planet again… she averted her thoughts. Her parent’s pride filled eyes, their fight to keep off tears, nation’s hope, her childhood dream…
The oxygen tank beeped again ever so loudly, flashing the red light.
30 minutes… that’s what the red light meant, she only had 30 minutes. At the time of her training session this would mean that the mission was a failure and the whole process would start all over again. But this was no training, and there was no turning back.
Suddenly she heard a familiar rumbling sound coming from behind. With great efforts she turned around to see a small object, flickering with multiple lights, hurling the red sand moving in her direction in an earnest. Her microphone came to life with muffled encrypted sounds. ‘Major Aradhya, this is base do you copy, do you copy?’ she could hear clearly now. Relief ran through her body like a soothing autumn’s breeze. ‘How did they recover the rover from ashes she wondered’ then she smiled to herself in amusement and heavily closed her eyes, ‘lack of oxygen leads to hallucinations’ she could hear her trainer say in a deep voice, the frantic beeping of oxygen tank agreed.
