Ten feet above the ground, the retro-engines—added for landings on the waterless exoplanet—fire and the CM settles with a roar and a thump on the surface of Earth Two. Elliott remains in his seat. He’s feeling weak from almost three weeks in zero gravity, and the G forces he experienced on the way down have near drained him.
After ten minutes, he feels recovered enough to attempt an exit. He unlocks and removes his helmet and then his IV gloves. He unbuckles his harness and pushes the straps from his torso. He’s lying on his back at about a thirty degree angle, so he hitches his rear back until he is sitting upright. Getting from there down into the Lower Equipment Bay without banging arms or knees on struts or lockers or control panel takes care. He nearly does it, but by the time he’s got his breathing mask on, and an oxygen bottle on a sling about his neck, he’s nursing a bruise on one shin. He clambers across to the hatch and yanks down the pump handle. There’s a hiss as gas is forced from the bottles, the gears grind, and the hatch pops open and swings wide.
Despite the mask, a smell of burnt earth and hot metal immediately fills the CM. Elliott finds himself short of breath and it takes an effort of will to slow and deepen his breathing. He scrambles out of the hatch and he’s standing on the surface of Earth Two and—
This is not Earth and it’s not Mars. He is in the middle of a plain of dark rocky soil. It looks almost purple. The sky is red, fading to black at the zenith, and the only light is a dim crimson that washes like blood over everything. On the horizon, he can make out a low range of hills, looking almost pink in the distance. The horizon itself strangely seems to curve slightly upwards.
After fetching his kit from inside the CM, Elliott strips off his spacesuit and dresses in suitable clothing: sturdy trousers, hiking boots, thin shirt. It’s very warm, almost tropical but for the dryness. It reminds him of a trip into the Arizona desert, back when he was training for Ares 9. He can feel the skin of his forearms puckering from heat and the lack of moisture in the air.
The CM has landed due south of Phaeton Base. The surrounding landscape is empty and dead, entirely desolate, but there’s a ridge to the north, forming the upcurved horizon, and the base ought to be in that direction. It’s difficult to judge distance here, but the ridge looks to be about three miles away. An hour’s walk, perhaps more given the gravity is about half again what he’s used to. He settles his rucksack on his back and sets off.
Elliott stands atop the ridge and looks down into the valley where Phaeton Base should have stood. He sees a gently-sloped declivity, red like everything in this infernal landscape, an expanse of the same powdery soil that is beneath his boots. There is no sign of the base, of its dozen buildings, the great shed that was the rocket assembly building, not even any scorched ground where once the launching pad had been.
He starts forward, walking slowly down the hill. Has the base been removed? Its buildings were on stilts, but he can’t even see any disturbed soil. He’s not precisely sure where in this valley Phateon Base was located, but it’s somewhere around here. He spots something on the ground ahead, a hole perhaps, and increases his pace. But it’s only a small dark rock, half-buried in the soil.
Thirty minutes later, he’s explored the ground on which Phaeton Base stood, but has found no evidence it ever existed. The soil is completely undisturbed.
He takes off his rucksack, and pulls out the radio from a side-pocket. It’s pre-set to the frequency used by the Goddard and, according to his watch—the same Omega Speedmaster he took to Mars—the spacecraft should be overhead. He plugs the radio into the mike jack on his mask, and reports in. Finley answers:
Reading you loud and clear, sir. What have you found?
Nothing. If it was ever here, there’s no evidence I can find.
You’re in the right place?
To prove it, Elliott pulls a flare from his rucksack, lights it and then sticks it upright in the ground. It burns fiercely, too bright to look at even in this dim redness.
Yeah, we got you on the remote telescope. The coordinates match. It’s definitely gone then?
Like it was never here.
No aliens?
[laughter] No life.
I guess that’s it then.
How long are you going to hang around for?
Another week, maybe. You got about a month’s worth of supplies, right? It’s a damn shame it had to be one-way—
I knew what I was doing. You can rest easy on that score. I knew I’d be stuck down here.
Yeah, well. It was an honour to meet you, sir.
They sent Elliott to Earth Two because he is the only astronaut who knows for a cold hard fact there is life elsewhere in the universe. He is the only man to have seen the evidence. It was just a disc covered in alien writing and it was billions of years old, but he knows it was real because it gave the US the Serpo engine. He wouldn’t be here now on an exoplanet orbiting Gliese 876 if it hadn’t been real.
But he doesn’t think aliens have done this, he doesn’t think the disappearance of Phaeton Base was caused by aliens.
Brigadier General Bradley Elliott, USAF, lifts a hand to his brow and gazes toward the setting sun. As Gliese 876 falls on the hills lining the horizon, streaks of blood-red spread out across the bottoms of clouds, and he can’t help thinking it may be an omen. The light creates a bowl of hues across the sky, mauve above the horizon, through carmine, crimson, ruby, amaranth and magenta. The topmost layer, a pale coral colour, fades away to black. The temperature has dropped but it’s still very warm. He’s not going to freeze tonight. Or any night.
It’s dark now, the profound darkness that exists only in deserts far from light pollution. Some stars have appeared and their light is enough to see by. They sparkle like diamonds, flashing and blinking, scintillating. It’s a weird effect, an alien effect. Elliott unrolls his sleeping bag and lays it on the ground. This world is dead, there is nothing that can do him injury while he sleeps. He has more than enough oxygen in his bottle, and a spare in the rucksack should it run out. Despite the discomfort of the mask, he falls asleep quickly, and only wakes when red sunlight creeps across the land. He is hungry and very thirsty.
After a chocolate bar and plenty of water, he packs up his sleeping bag, shrugs his rucksack onto his back, and returns to the CM. Once he has loaded himself up with supplies, he will start walking. Any direction is as good as another. He has enough food and water and oxygen to last him a while yet. He turns and scans the crimson sky, trying to figure out where Earth is. At fifteen light years’ distance, the Sun is just another star. When he thinks he’s looking in the right direction, he mouths a silent farewell to Judy.
This time, he is not going home.
GLOSSARY
Apollo 1 Intended to be the first manned Apollo mission, it never left the launch-pad when a fire in the Command Module during a plugs-out test resulted in the deaths of all three crew. Crew: Virgil ‘Gus’ Grissom (CDR), Edward H White (senior pilot) and Roger Chaffee (pilot).