Earthbound

18

By the next morning, the fire had burned all the way down, and there was nothing recognizably human on the surface of the ashes. Those of us who had dug the pits were given a morning of rest while different work crews filled them.

I volunteered to take some tea and cookies out to them, mid-morning, which was good fortune for me, if not for them. I dropped the tray. But I got to see the Martians land.

A huge floating disc, maybe half the size of the entire compound, floated swiftly down out of the sky and stopped, hovering a couple of feet off the ground. There was no sound except for the crash of my teapot and cups.

“Please do not shoot,” the disc said with an amplified American accent. “We’re unarmed; we mean no harm. Hello, Carmen.”

“Hello,” I said. “I know you?”

“No. But there are people aboard you do know.” There was a dome-shaped protrusion in the center of the disc. A wedge of door opened, facing us.

A Martian stepped out and rippled toward the edge of the disc, all of its arms out in greeting.

“Snowbird?”

“It’s good to see you, Carmen. Paul is not with you.”

“He died… he died a couple of days ago.”

“I am sorry we missed him. We could use another pilot. It’s a long way back home.”

“Siberia?”

“Back to Mars. Home.”

“It came from Russia to pick me up? Us?”

“They picked me up in Russia, Carmen. They came from Mars, of course.”

“We are trying to locate every surviving Martian on Earth,” the amplified voice said. “You and Paul appear to be the last.”

Namir had come up beside me. “Leaving… for good?” he said.

“We don’t know,” the voice said. “This is all native Martian technology, which is to say, it’s from the Others. It might last forever, it might crash today. All we know for sure is that we can’t touch the surface of the Earth. If we do that, the power dies.”

“We had to jump on board,” Snowbird said, “from a snow-covered roof.”

“I’m afraid there’s not much time,” the voice said. “In the absence of Paul, you could bring another. But you have to decide now.”

I turned to Namir. His eyes were wide. Elza stepped up next to him, without touching, her face a mask. “Go with her,” she said softly. “You have to.”

Dustin limped up and put his hand on her shoulder. “For both of us,” he said. “For all of us. Go.”

Namir embraced them both, and said something I couldn’t hear.

Then he turned his back on everything and held out his hand to me.

His hand was large and strong. The skin was rough. “Shall we?”

We took two steps together and leaped into space.