Offworld (Dangerous Times Collection Book #1) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Robin Parrish

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181 pages

English

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The return of NASA's first manned mission to Mars was supposed to be a momentous day. But when the crew loses touch with ground control before entry, things look bleak. Safe after a treacherous landing, the crew emerges to discover the unthinkable--every man, woman, child, and animal has vanished without a trace. Alone now on their home planet, the crew sets out to discover where everyone has gone--and how to get them back--only to discover they may not be as alone as they thought.

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 juillet 2009
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441205544
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0259€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 2009 Robin Parrish
Published by Bethany House Publishers 11400 Hampshire Avenue South Bloomington, Minnesota 55438 www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan. www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2010
Ebook corrections 04.23.2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-for example, electronic, photocopy, recording-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-0554-4
Cover design by Lookout Design, Inc. Art direction by Paul Higdon.
www.somethingiswrongwiththeworld.com
DEDICATION
For Evan May your dreams carry you beyond the stars. I adore you, and I always will.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
One: This Thing of Darkness
Two: The Smoke and Stir of This Dim Spot
Three: The Foul and the Brute
Four: The Shadow of a Starless Night
Five: When the Road Darkens
Six: Though This Be Madness
Seven: Into the Nowhere
Eight: On the Other Side of Silence
Nine: The Wild, Mad Thrill
Ten: The Blood-Dimmed Tide
Eleven: Such Dreadful Lies
Twelve: Hidden Beneath the Careless Calm
Thirteen: The Tygers of Wrath
Fourteen: A Silver Shield Under the Sun
Fifteen: Not So Wild a Dream
Sixteen: A Winding Stair
Seventeen: The Equivocation of the Fiend
Eighteen: The Stiff Heart
Nineteen: The Obscuring Smoke
Twenty: These Infinite Spaces
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Robin Parrish
Back Ad
ONE
THIS THING OF DARKNESS
AUGUST 11, 2032
Right foot.
Left foot.
Right foot.
Left foot.
Stumble.
Red dirt filled Burke’s field of view. Not that it was much of a change. Red dirt had been all he could see for hours. Even the bright pinkish tan of the planet’s sky was washed away by the windstorm.
“Beech!” he called out, hoisting himself back to his feet as the wind spun him about. He carried a small black pack with a few meager supplies and some mission equipment inside. “I’ve got zero visibility! No orientation! I can’t see anything!”
He stopped.
Burke’s training fought against the fear creeping into his mind, against the rising panic as the wind fed more soil and dust into the crevices of his space suit.
Got to find my way . . . dirt’s building up . . . soon I won’t be able to move. . . .
“Habitat, this is Burke!” he yelled over the storm. “I can’t see anything, and I’ve lost contact with Beechum!”
No answer. A brutal gust surged around him like the gale force of a hurricane, threatening to pick him up off his feet. He crouched to center his weight, slung the pack over his back, and took a steadying breath.
“Houston?” he tried halfheartedly. There was little chance the relay satellite orbiting above would pick him up if the rest of his own team couldn’t hear him from less than a hundred miles away. “Is anyone reading me?”
No reply, not even static. The earpiece inside his helmet was dead.
Okay, Chris. Think. You’re in the middle of a dried-up riverbed that we’ve been studying for weeks. You know your way around this place. Think about landmarks. What’s nearby?
The wind cleared just enough for him to catch a glimpse of a red boulder, directly ahead of his position. Burke crawled forward, on hands and knees, and stooped there in the shadow of the large rock to rest and think. Fighting the dust storm had required all of his strength, every muscle ready to crumple from the effort. He brushed aside the deep red dust on his right arm and uncovered an electronic readout on the underside.
It read 5:08 p m.
Which meant he had about four hours of oxygen remaining in his suit.
And worse, nightfall would come in less than an hour. Martian days were just thirty-nine minutes longer than days on Earth, so sunrise and sunset were virtually the same on the red planet as on the blue one.
So . . . he thought . Lost on the surface of Mars, unable to reach the Habitat, unable to see, barely able to move, only four hours of air left, and it’s about to get dark and lethally cold.
If Dad could see me now . . .
The wind raged on, pressing Chris’ full frame against the boulder, wave after wave of red dirt pounding into him so hard he could feel it through the thickness of the suit. He could even sense the temperature dropping around him, in spite of his suit’s automatic climate control, as daylight began to slide ever so slowly into dusk.
Survival drills ran through his head . . .
The horrible roar of the wind made it terribly hard to concentrate.
Water reserves running low, better save it.
Sweat ran down into his eyes, but he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t reach his face through the tinted visor. . . .
His head rested against the large red rock behind him. . . .
He passed out.
APRIL 28, 2033 EIGHT MONTHS LATER ARES MISSION, RETURN VOYAGE T-MINUS 67 DAYS TO EARTH
All five hundred square feet of the Ares turned on a central axis as the ship raced for home at 75,000 miles per hour. It was little more than a long, sophisticated metal tube that could separate into segmented compartments. The compartment farthest from the main engine served as the command module and resembled a tiny space shuttle, with small wings on each side and a tail fin that looked proportionately too small. The Ares tumbled through space sideways to give the crew a semblance of gravity, spiraling her way back to Earth.
Christopher Burke awoke to the sound of his first officer pedaling a stationary bicycle at a steady clip, a baseball cap keeping her hair out of her face, and wires channeling music into her ears.
Trisha Merriday looked tired. She concealed it well, but he’d spent two and a half years with her and the other two crewmembers, and he knew them almost as well as they knew themselves.
“You doing okay today?” he tentatively asked. It was always a tightrope, asking how she was feeling, because he knew things about her that the others didn’t. Things that she’d chosen to confide in him alone. Everyone has certain secrets that are best kept hidden, he reasoned, and he’d returned the favor by confessing to her his ongoing dreams that began after a near-disastrous incident on Mars.
NASA would have preferred that they maintained a disciplined, formal tone in everything they did, of course. But it was impossible to spend two and a half years of your life with only three other people for company, and maintain formalities.
Trisha made no verbal reply; she merely eyed him knowingly and nodded with an affirmative. He could see that she was putting on her usual stoic façade.
She studied him as she pedaled and pedaled, her legs and feet churning the stirrups.
“Here,” she said, pulling a bottle of water from a holder attached to the bike. She tossed it to him, and it took a second longer to reach him than it would have on Earth, the artificial gravity from the ship’s spin only providing eighty percent of Earth’s pull. “You look like you’ve already had your workout.”
Chris nodded once, a quick thanks, and then took several long draughts from the bottle.
Trisha waited until he was done, trying not to be obvious about the fact that she was watching him, considering his appearance. But he could feel her eyes.
He stood from his bunk and stretched. Chris struck an imposing figure at his full height, which had lengthened even a bit more in the weightlessness of space. Blond, blue-eyed, handsome and strong, he’d always gotten more attention than he’d ever desired. But then, NASA couldn’t let an unattractive man be the first person to walk on Mars, could they? It was a reality of the job that would have caused others to question themselves, but he had no such doubts about himself or his abilities. He’d been preparing to be an astronaut his entire life, and so insecurity rarely troubled him.
“Had the dream again, didn’t you?” Trisha said softly, so her voice wouldn’t carry. She continued her relentless pedaling, the nonstop, rhythmic sound threatening to lull him back to sleep. His brain was still stumbling into consciousness, tripping over memories that were weakly fighting to surface.
Chris nodded, not looking at her. He closed his eyes, straining to think back . . .
“How far did you get this time?” she asked.
Chris rubbed his eyes; it did nothing to clear away the bleary lack of focus that was there. “Not much further than the sandstorm. I passed out somewhere along the way. I don’t remember anything after that.” His jaw clenched as he ground his teeth—a bad habit he’d acquired since the mission began. “There was one new detail that came back to me. I remember checking my air supply. There were only four hours left.”
Trisha stopped pedaling and the small cabin fell silent. “Four hours? Are you sure?”
He nodded again, still not facing her.
“That can’t be right. You were missing so much longer—you were out of radio contact for over eighteen hours before we found you.”
He spun on her, frustrated. “I know that!”
Trisha frowned, surprised.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I just . . . can’t make sense of it. Any of it.”
Trisha studied him.
“I’m the first person to walk on Mars,” Chris went on. “And there’s an eighteen-hour window of my time there that I can’t account for. NASA’s expecting a full debrief as soon as we get home, and I can’t even begin to explain what happened. I just can’t remember.”
They both knew how NASA felt about ambiguities—especially when it came to one of their astronauts. An unknown might as well be called a failure as far as the media was concerned.
Trisha was considering a response when a shout came from the command module, carrying all the way to their cabin, down near the main engine.
“Chris, you better get up here!” Terry called out, his voice betraying a hint of