The Lion of Mars Read online

“You’re hopeless,” Eliana said with a wry smile. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “Keep me?” he asked before he swooped in and kissed her.

  Ewww. Yeah, time to get moving.

  My next stop was the algae farm. Phinneus was puttering around in the hydroponic section.

  “How are the carrots coming along?” I asked him. “Do you think they’ll be ready in time?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Which reminds me. I have something for you.”

  “You do?” I asked as I followed him back to his cluttered office.

  “I forgot I even brought it with me,” he said, handing me a wooden box.

  I opened the lid. Inside were paper cards.

  “Is it a game?” I asked.

  “It’s a recipe box,” Phinneus said. “It belonged to my wife.”

  “What’s a recipe box?”

  “It’s an old Earth way of keeping recipes. Each card is a different dish.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “See?” he said, and picked up a card. “This was her recipe for carrot cake.”

  I could read the title: Yummy Carrot Cake.

  But the recipe was hard to make out. It was written in a loopy hand.

  “What language is this?” I asked Phinneus.

  “It’s English.”

  “It doesn’t look like English,” I said.

  He chuckled. “It’s a way of writing called cursive. If you were in school on Earth, you would know how to read cursive.”

  “Good thing I’m on Mars,” I said.

  He burst out laughing. “Do you know what? Rose would have loved you.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “We couldn’t have children of our own,” he said wistfully. “It was our greatest regret.”

  “Well, now you have all us kids,” I pointed out.

  His eyes softened. “Too true. Do you want to know a secret?”

  I nodded.

  “After Rose, you, dear Bell, are the best thing to happen in my life,” he said.

  “Well, after Leo, you’re the best thing to happen in my life,” I told him.

  He shook his head and smiled.

  * * *

  My last stop was the train tunnel.

  The train connected all the settlements. It had been built as a joint project by the five founding countries—the United States, France, Finland, Russia, and China. They’d attempted to build a train track on the surface, but complications caused them to have to move the whole thing underground. Phinneus was right: it was an engineering wonder. Too bad we didn’t use it anymore.

  When I slid open the door to the train tunnel and stepped inside with my bucket, an icy blast of air hit my face. The tunnel was kept pressurized but not heated, and the air smelled rusty.

  I snapped a glow stick and held it up. There in the darkness was our train, Percy. Eliana had named it after an Earth digi-reel about talking trains. Percy was designed to hold cargo because most of the early investors wanted to mine Mars for its riches—opals, gold, iridium, palladium, and other minerals.

  Even though we weren’t permitted to visit the other settlements, Eliana still made sure the train was in working order. When we were younger, she would even let us drive it. We never went far—just to the second curve and back. One time, I honked the horn as we went around the curve, and someone farther down the tunnel honked back. Trey and I had always wondered which country the person was from.

  My stomach was growling—it was nearly lunchtime—so I stopped reminiscing and got to work emptying the filter. I was about to leave when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I squinted into the inky blackness of the tunnel and then froze when something stared back at me.

  Something with glowing green eyes.

  Except people didn’t have glowing eyes.

  But I bet aliens did.

  The bucket fell from my hand, spilling dust.

  Could the aliens have survived the crash and somehow gotten into the tunnel? Were they even now infiltrating our settlement? Would they eat us or turn us into mushrooms or something even worse? (Although what was worse than being turned into a mushroom?) And what did they look like? Did they have big teeth and sharp claws? Were they slimy? Did they spit poison?

  My head was spinning. I was getting ready to make a run for it when I blinked. And the eyes disappeared.

  I held up my glow stick, looking around the shadows, but there was nothing. Had it even been real? Or had I imagined the whole thing?

  Before I could investigate, an alarm started blaring. No doubt it was Sai with another of his emergency drills.

  I left the tunnel, and as I made my way toward the alarm, I saw Trey and Vera and Flossy walking down the corridor. No one was in a hurry. I fell into step with them.

  “I think this is Sai’s way of punishing us for the whole rover thing,” Flossy said.

  “We’re going to be doing emergency drills for the rest of our lives,” Vera said bitterly.

  While there had been no more middle-of-the-night drills, we’d had two alarms this week.

  The source of this one was the generator room, but when Flossy went to open the door, it didn’t budge.

  “Huh,” she said. “It’s locked.”

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  “Beats me,” Vera said.

  So we just stood around and waited for someone to tell us what to do.

  Meems came rushing down the hall, carrying her med kit.

  “It’s locked,” I explained. “We can’t get inside.”

  Her face scrunched up. “Locked? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Well, it is,” Vera said, jutting out her chin. “Sai just wants to torture us.”

  Meems banged on the door. “Hello? Anyone in there?”

  No one answered, and the alarm kept blaring.

  “Maybe the alarm malfunctioned,” Meems said.

  Just then, Phinneus came down the corridor. He was moving more slowly than usual, using one hand to steady himself with the cane while the other touched the wall.

  “What are you all doing out here when the alarm is coming from the generator room?” he asked.

  “The door’s locked,” Meems told him. “The alarm must have malfunctioned.”

  He stared at the door and then looked at Meems.

  “Check the carbon dioxide level,” he said.

  Confusion flashed across her face. “Carbon dioxide?”

  “Quickly!” he urged.

  Meems scrambled for her med kit. She pulled out an instrument, holding it to the crack below the door. A red light started blinking.

  “Oh no!” Meems cried, her face pale. “The air scrubber failed!”

  Every room had a carbon dioxide sensor. If it detected a dangerous amount of carbon dioxide, it locked the room to protect the rest of the settlement.

  “Help me open the door!” Meems ordered quickly. “They’ve probably passed out from the carbon dioxide!”

  We pushed at the door again and again, but it was heavier than it looked. None of us were strong enough.

  Then Albie’s big body was barreling down the hall. He was wearing his enviro suit and carrying his helmet.

  “What’s going on?” he yelled. “Sai said he would meet me topside.”

  “The air scrubber failed and they’re locked inside!” Meems shouted. “We can’t open the door!”

  “Move!” Albie ordered, putting the thin helmet over his head.

  He took a few steps back and threw himself at the door. It crashed open. Huh. Maybe he would make a good football player.

  On the floor were the motionless bodies of Sai, Eliana, and Darby.

  “Hurry!” Phinneus shouted. “Get them out and shut the door!”

  Albie dra
gged them out. With quick efficiency, Meems put masks on them and hooked them up to the oxygen.

  Eliana was the first one to open her eyes. She seemed confused and tried to pull off the mask. Meems batted her hands away.

  “Keep breathing,” she encouraged.

  A heartbeat later, Darby groaned. “My head is killing me!”

  Then Sai took a deep, labored breath but didn’t open his eyes. “Sitrep?” he whispered in a hoarse voice.

  “The air scrubber failed. You almost died,” Meems said, her voice rising. “All of you almost died!”

  Darby looked at his wife and grabbed her hand. “Are you okay, Peanut Butter?”

  She looked at him tiredly.

  “I told you that was the wrong node, Jelly.”

  DATE: 4.28.2091

  FROM: CDR Dexter

  TO: US Terrestrial Command

  MESSAGE: Situation Report

  I am in receipt of your comm regarding the updated time of arrival for the resupply ship. We will be standing by.

  Sai Dexter, COMMANDER

  Expeditionary & Settlement Team

  United States Territory, Mars

  I stared at the goopy green sludge. It wasn’t very appetizing.

  “Algae porridge again?” Vera complained.

  Albie just shoved the food into his mouth. “It’s not that bad,” he said.

  “Speak for yourself,” Trey said. His teeth were green from the porridge.

  We’d been eating the same meals for the last few days: algae porridge for breakfast, algae stew for lunch, and algae loaf for supper. We were all pretty sick of it. (Especially the algae loaf.)

  “I can’t wait until the ship gets here,” Flossy said, staring at her bowl.

  The weeks before the supply ship arrived were always hard. By now, we’d run out of all the good provisions—chocolate, sugar, freeze-dried fruits, salt, cinnamon, maple syrup—just about everything that made life worth living. It’s not that we would ever starve: we had two storage rooms full of MREs (meals ready to eat) that we could live on for years. But they weren’t very tasty. And, of course, we had algae and the vegetables that Phinneus grew.

  “I miss chocolate,” Vera said.

  “Me too,” Albie said. “And honey.”

  “I miss bread made with Earth flour,” Flossy said.

  “Jam,” Trey said. “That strawberry kind.”

  “What about those little oranges?” I said. “Those are my favorite.”

  “Mandarin oranges,” Flossy said.

  Across the room, Sai stood up to make an announcement.

  “No regular chores this morning,” he said. “It’s harvest.”

  All us kids groaned.

  A few times a year, Phinneus grew a big batch of algae. When it was ready to be harvested, everyone had to drop what they were doing and help out. No one liked it. But there was no getting out of the work because we were making something absolutely vital to the survival of the settlement.

  Toilet paper.

  With eleven people, we went through a lot of the stuff. Also, we would make a version of kitty litter for Leo.

  Albie tried to rally us.

  “Let’s go. The sooner we start, the sooner we’re finished,” he said.

  “I hate my life,” Vera muttered.

  Even Flossy seemed to wilt a little.

  Processing the algae into toilet paper was no fun. You had to pour the algae through a machine that stripped out the water. Then you spread the algae paste thinly on plastic sheets to dry. After that, you had to cut it up into small squares. It was a hot, messy, miserable all-day affair, and if it wasn’t done correctly, you ended up with scratchy, bumpy toilet paper.

  As I stood up to follow, Sai called, “Bell, you’ll be helping Salty Bill in the kitchen.”

  “How come Bell gets out of harvest?” Trey asked, a mutinous expression on his face.

  “Because his collarbone still isn’t strong enough, thanks to your little outing,” Sai replied.

  “I can help! I feel fine!” I insisted.

  “Absolutely not,” Meems said in a firm voice.

  Trey didn’t even look at me. He just stomped out.

  * * *

  Salty Bill had modeled the kitchen after the one on a submarine he had worked on for years. It was long and narrow, with a walk-in storage closet at one end. Every bit of space was used as efficiently as possible. It was Salty Bill’s kingdom, and we were only allowed to use it with his permission. He was very particular. Something put away in the wrong place resulted in a lot of yelling.

  In spite of this, it was usually fun to help in the kitchen. I liked the stirring and mixing and measuring, and I loved the scents—the sweet-spiciness of cinnamon, the cake-batter smell of vanilla, the doughy smell of fresh-baked bread.

  But today Salty Bill was crankier than usual, and that was saying something. Every time he opened the storage closet door, he slammed it shut again, muttering about having nothing to cook with.

  “No flour,” he said. “No garlic powder. No baking soda.”

  While eating was hard on us, making meals was hard on Salty Bill.

  “There had better be salt on that supply ship,” he grumbled.

  Once during the early years, Earth Command had forgotten to pack salt on the supply ship, and Salty Bill had hit the roof. That’s how he got his nickname.

  “Can we make something different than algae loaf for supper tonight?” I asked him.

  Salty Bill stared at the empty shelves. “I guess we can try to make pasta. Get some algae.”

  I grabbed a few dried-algae blocks. They always smelled a little funny. Meems said they reminded her of swimming in the lake when she was a child. I still couldn’t quite picture a lake. I’d never seen that much water in my life.

  We broke the blocks into chunks and put them in the blending machine, adding water. Then we rolled out the algae dough, sliced it into long threads, and put it in boiling water.

  “What to do for sauce?” Salty Bill asked, wiping his hands on his apron.

  “I don’t think Phinneus has any tomatoes,” I told him.

  Salty Bill sighed. “I miss the days when I could take the train to another settlement and get a cup of sugar.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  He pursed his lips. “Well, that didn’t happen often. But it was nice knowing we had the option.”

  Then he did the strangest thing: he laughed.

  “One time, I was trying to make bread and didn’t have any yeast. So I went to the French settlement and asked to borrow some. You know what they did?”

  I shook my head.

  “They gave me some and a basket of baguettes!”

  “What’s a baguette?”

  “It’s a really long loaf of bread,” he said, holding his arms out wide. “Just about the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted.” He seemed to catch himself. “Well, those days are long gone.”

  I thought about other things that were gone.

  “What was Lissa like?” I asked.

  Salty Bill looked at me sharply. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because I don’t remember her,” I said. “I was too little.”

  He stroked his beard. “She was always happy. And she loved waffles.”

  “I love waffles!” I said.

  “It was terrible when she died,” he said, shaking his head. “Sai took it the hardest.”

  The timer went off on the cooker.

  Salty Bill poured the algae pasta into a strainer, then put some in a bowl for us to try. We both took a bite.

  “Well?” he asked. “What do you think?”

  I forced myself to swallow. It was terrible.

  “That bad?” he asked.

 
I nodded.

  He picked up the bowl of pasta and tipped it into the trash.

  “Looks like I’m making algae loaf,” he said. “Again.”

  * * *

  That night after supper, we kids gathered in the recreation room to watch an Earth digi-reel. We had amassed a large collection. Detective stories. Dramas. Romances. Mysteries. Horror. Cooking shows.

  Right now, we were watching a courtroom drama. It was a really old one—from the 1980s. It featured people who were called attorneys. Instead of fighting with a sword or a gun, attorneys used words. They won fights by persuading people. I was fascinated by this.

  “Look! She’s wearing a pantsuit!” Flossy said excitedly, pointing to the attorney on the screen. Flossy was sitting in her usual spot on the couch. Next to her was Albie.

  I was sitting on the floor, petting Pup, a small robot who made a happy doglike sound when you petted him. Sai said he was the best dog ever because he could walk himself.

  “What’s wrong with her shoulders?” Albie asked.

  The shoulders of the attorney’s jacket were all puffed up.

  “They’re supposed to look that way! The 1980s were so fashionable!” Flossy said with a swoony look. “I just love the olden days.”

  “I would never wear anything like that,” Vera said from where she was lying on the floor, her head on a cushion.

  “What if it was black?” Flossy asked her.

  “No way. It would still have those weird pillow shoulders,” Vera said.

  I agreed with Vera that the pillow shoulders were weird. (And they looked uncomfortable.) But stranger to me was that almost all the people had very pale skin. Here on Mars our skin colors were varied. From darker than me (Darby) to lighter than me (Vera) to just about like me (Sai).

  “Oh, look at her hair,” Flossy said, pointing at the screen.

  There was a lady with long red hair.

  “Does she put paint on her hair to turn it red?” I asked.

  Flossy shook her head. “That’s her actual hair, silly.”

  I had never seen a person with red hair in real life.

  “You mean it grew that way?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “There are people on Earth who have red hair. I’ve seen digi-pics.”