The Long Mars

Frank looked across at the glider, bleakly. ‘You should know, Willis. Remember the whalers, a million worlds back? You traded them Steppers, for access to those monoliths. Do you remember how it went? One of those ten-armed characters got hold of your boxes and survival bubbles, and started lording it over another of them—’

‘You called him the prince,’ Sally said.

‘Yeah. That was one pissed-off crustacean. Well, my guess is he got hold of one of those Steppers and all the survival bubbles he could steal, and he took off stepwise, chasing us.’

Willis grunted. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘Dishonour,’ Sally said. ‘Revenge. Just as Frank has been saying. Maybe you destroyed his social standing in front of his peers, Dad. Shit. I thought I saw something following us. A light in the dark. I didn’t figure it out, never put it together.’

‘And you, Willis,’ Frank said, ‘this is all your fault. You inflicted a Step Day on those guys, just like you did to humanity. It was just a means to an end to you, a way of getting to the next stage in your grand plan. You never thought of the impact it might have on them, did you? And it’s already been a pretty savage one judging by this guy’s obsessive, murderous rage.’

Sally watched the dust plume. Was it coming closer? ‘I think Frank’s right, Dad. And now he’s coming back for more.’

Frank punched a fist into a gloved palm. ‘And we’ve been standing here yakking and haven’t loaded a damn thing. We can’t let him get at the second glider, Willis—’

Willis hesitated no longer. He fired up the launch rocket and the glider leapt into the air, wheeling over the two of them on the ground. ‘Listen,’ he called down. ‘I’ll draw him off with the glider. You get the stuff packed up. When he’s out of range I’ll come back – the glider is a hell of a lot faster than that damn sand-yacht – and we’ll load up and step away.’

‘Come on.’ Frank led the way, collapsing the bubble-dome shelters, bundling up pallets of food and water. Sally followed his lead, making for the wreck of the Woden to see what she could salvage.

Willis dipped the glider over the sand-yacht, and Sally saw that, yes, the yacht was turning, following the bird in the sky. Willis called, ‘He’ll follow us when we step. But he’s not going to be able to get any closer to us while we keep moving stepwise.’

‘Dad,’ Sally said urgently. ‘Why not just kill him?’

‘I got nothing to kill him with.’

‘Come on. I can’t believe you didn’t pack any weapons. Some kind of handgun adapted for Martian air.’

‘Believe me. I didn’t.’

She hesitated. ‘OK. Well, I did. In the back of the food lockers, on both the gliders. I stowed away crossbows. To work them, you just have to—’

‘Found them. Took them out. Dumped them. Sorry, kid.’

She felt unreasonably enraged. ‘Why the hell? Listen to me, Dad. Weapons like that have helped keep me alive a long time in the Long Earth—’

‘Don’t hold with weapons. Wouldn’t expect that from a guy from Wyoming, would you, Frank? Weapons kill people, in the hands of idiots. And since most of the human race are idiots—’

Sally yelled, ‘Including me, you pompous old tyrant? Including Frank, for God’s sake?’

‘Anyhow we don’t need weapons to get rid of this guy. He’ll destroy himself soon enough. He can’t do me any harm up here. And then, the ride home. It won’t be comfortable but we’ll make it. Look, he’s a long way out, and heading away now. I’ll come back in and—’

Sally saw a blinding light coming from the plain, from the sand-yacht dust plume, directly under the glider’s elegant form. And a spark, bright as the sun of Earth, lifted up into the sky, trailing black smoke.

A spark arcing straight up at Thor.

Though Willis banked with impressive reflexes he only had a second or two to react. Sally saw the spark rip through the fabric of the glider.

When Willis came back on line, Sally heard alarms sounding in the background, patient artificial voices explaining the nature of the damage. ‘Shit, shit . . .’

‘Dad, what the hell was that? Some kind of rocket?’

‘I think it was natural. Like the dragon-beasts, like those fire-breathing columns we saw. It’s like a methane-burning worm, flying through the air, using that burning breath as a rocket exhaust. A living missile. Maybe the whalers cultivate them, as weapons. Saved that up for a surprise when he needed it, didn’t he? These guys are pretty smart.’

Frank said, ‘Yes, they are. And you thought the prince couldn’t touch you.’ Despite the peril of the situation for them all, angry as he was, Frank sounded like he was almost gloating. ‘You were wrong again, Linsay.’

‘We’ll discuss my personal flaws later. Listen, the wings are intact, but my controls are mostly shot, and I’m losing pressure . . . I’m coming down. Let’s stick to the plan. We’ll load up what we have, launch again, get out of here. There should be time before he reaches us. When we’ve outrun him stepwise we can land, make proper repairs—’

‘Just get that bird down here,’ Frank snapped.

And Sally was watching the dust plume. ‘He’s closing. I think you keep underestimating this guy, Dad. He is a hunter, from a culture of hunters.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Later. Coming in.’

The landing was heavy, but, as Frank remarked, in these circumstances any landing that left the fuselage intact was acceptable.

To Frank’s curt orders, Willis stayed in the cockpit, at the controls, ready to get the bird back in the air at short notice. Frank and Sally, meanwhile, began to bundle their goods into the glider’s slim fuselage. They had to work around the scorched, gaping hole in the rear where the rocket-worm had passed straight through.

Frank muttered and growled. ‘Hell, I hate the idea of launching again without taking care of that damage.’

‘We have to. And we can’t leave the gear behind.’

‘I tried stepping, you know,’ Frank said. ‘When he came in for his first passes. Sally, he stepped straight after me. Even with the anti-nausea drugs, stepping slows me down, just a little. Not him, not the prince—’

‘Don’t talk,’ Sally said. ‘Just load.’

‘And we’re below capacity too. We’re going to have to leave stuff behind if—’

‘Shut up.’ At the foot of that racing dust plume, Sally saw another spark of light, this time racing over the ground. Racing towards her, she realized. ‘He’s firing at us, this time. Dad, incoming. Get her up again, now.’

‘Roger that—’

The glider scraped into the air with a flare of booster rockets.

And Frank Wood was standing there, staring at the approaching rocket-worm.

Sally leapt forward. She endured an age of low-gravity slow-motion falling towards Frank. At last she slammed into him, her arms around his waist, pushing him to the ground.

Not a heartbeat later the rocket-worm hammered into the ground. Sally felt the pressure wave, feeble in the thin air, a stronger blast of heat.

When it was over she was on top of Frank, who was on the ground, on his back, gasping. She rolled off him, clumsy in her pressure suit.

Frank said, sitting up, ‘What the hell – would he have hit?’

‘He was damn close.’

‘If it is some kind of living being, this weapon – internal methane and air sacs – I wonder how close you can aim it?’

Willis called down from the spiralling glider, ‘If it’s alive, maybe it aims itself. Meanwhile he’s coming back for more, on that damn sand sled of his.’

Sally saw the looming dust plume. There was a figure on the deck, beneath the big sail: that body like a huge upright centipede, incongruously wrapped in the plastic sac of a survival bag, wielding some kind of spear.

Frank stood, breathing hard. ‘By Christ, I’m getting old. Look at that bastard. He’s relentless.’

Sally glanced up. ‘Keep on climbing, Dad. Just stay out of the range of the rocket-worms.’