Phobos

Alone on a Martian moon

Down.

The ship went down.

The captain was still piecing it together.

The ship went down!

He wondered how much time had passed. An hour, a few minutes?

A few seconds?

The crew had been lost in the crash. Pinned to the floor, the captain could’t avoid seeing fragments of his co-pilot’s body strewn in front of him, caked to the steel walls and floor. He forced back another wretch. It had been a messy crash.

But when aren’t they?

That poor co-pilot, he thought. Only twenty days away from their reentry to Earth.

How much air do I have?

The captain attempted lifting himself up once more. The equipment holding him down budged slightly.

Am I the only one left?

He was lucky, he thought. Explosive decompression should have blown the ship in half on impact. He still had time.

Don’t think about how much time.

After extricating himself from the wreckage and hastily slipping into a suit, he made a quick pass through the small vessel.

I am the only one left.

The exit still functioned. He nearly blinded himself opening the hatch outside. A sunny day on the red planet.

Mars.

That’s right, he remembered. Of course it would be Mars. They were halfway past it when-

We were hit.

Right, when you were hit. The meteoroid couldn’t have been larger than a golf ball. A pebble, really. But it hit the right place.

The wrong place.

The captain wondered if there was an active mission on Mars. The odds were smaller than he could bring himself to consider, but it was possible he could just hitch a ride back. He chuckled.

Hitchhiking with astronauts.

Mars hadn’t been of much use to anyone in quite some time, but scientists still came to study the dust and rocks.

I’m going to die here.

Ten kilometers.

Ten kilometers separated the captain from the source of the radio signals. He hoped it wasn’t only one of those old-fashioned rovers.

It’s all I have to go on!

His suit could last for over three days, but without water he would not. He knew he had to pace himself getting there.

The rusted ground quaked and he lost his balance.

Jesus!

That would be the ship decompressing explosively, the captain realized. He recovered from his fall as quickly as the low gravity would allow.

It was quiet here, the captain’s steadied breathing being the only sound in his ears. He didn’t want to rush, but he was worried about nightfall. The darkness would make it harder to avoid tripping.

Something’s there!

He turned around. There was movement at the corner of his eye — he saw it. He knew he saw it. The Martian landscape had no shortage of hiding places. He studied it for as long as was logical, then turned back around.

The sun was definitely setting. There’s still light for an hour or two after Mars’ sunsets, but that wouldn't be enough. The remainder of his trip would be in the dark.

The frequent dust storms forced the captain to stop in his tracks and huddle close to the ground. The atmosphere was thin enough that he didn’t have to worry about being blown over, but the dust that whipped by could wear down his suit. Like the captain himself, it wasn’t designed for such extreme conditions.

When the dust wasn’t blowing, Mars was at once serene and eerie. The unpolluted night sky was naturally stunning, and the densely packed, uncountable stars threatened to illuminate everything except the captain’s path. The suit’s flashlight seemed to create darkness around him rather than dispelling it.

He knew Earth should have been visible, but he could not find it. Why was it so hard to find a blue spec among so many white ones? He suppressed a pang of panic.

In contrast, he could not avoid Mars’ two moons. As he continued, the smaller Deimos lagged behind, while the larger Phobos stayed directly overhead. No matter how far he walked, or how long he stopped in the dust storms, the captain was pursued by Phobos.

There was a light in the distance.

He studied it carefully.

It moved. It was a glint, staying in place but shifting still.

No, the light was moving. It was coming towards him.

The captain’s heart beat in his eardrums. He had only covered half the distance to the radio signals. Worse, his suit wasn’t detecting anything from the strange light. No heat, no radio, no life.

What could it be?

There was some rocky terrain close by, and the captain decided it would be better to observe from there than remain exposed.

The light moved unnaturally, flitting back and forth as it made its way to his previous location. It drew closer and he recognized its form as humanoid.

But it couldn’t be human.

The captain glanced up to where the figure had come from, and when he looked back the figure was gone.

I’m not crazy.

No one said you-

I know what I saw. It was there. It was right there!

And now it’s not.

And now it’s not.

The captain decided that whatever the light was, it was not more important than a chance at rescue.

Don’t tell me what to do.

It was still night when the captain reached the radio-emitting lander.

Landers are old tech.

The dust had done a number on it — it had definitely been abandoned for some time. He crawled inside and saw that it was in a standby mode. Desperate, he scrambled to reactivate any kind of communication functions.

It was no use. The craft could barely function in standby. The captain froze, barely able to-

There! There it is again!

He saw a familiar light pass right outside. In his haste to exit, he launched himself from the lander and floated a few meters before landing on the sandy soil. He rushed to his feet.

There wasn’t just one lighted figure, there were three. The captain concluded they were holograms of the lander’s astronauts, all working like any scientific explorers would.

Some kind of history lesson for future generations?

The lander must have malfunctioned, and the atmosphere carried the projections several kilometers away. The captain laughed.

How futile.

Alone on an empty planet, the captain grasped a nearby rock and smashed it into his helmet.