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Kirk Erickson looked up into black starless space from the passenger seat of the caterpillar. A narrow beam of light from the roof lamp showed the bumpy way ahead and lit the dust kicked up by the well-worn wheels. Here, the dust fell eerily slowly in the low gravity. Long, winding lines of tracks left by previous trips in the battered utility vehicle could be seen crisscrossing nearby.

 

“Go back,” he said to his companion, the only other surviving member of their lonely outpost. “Please go back.”

 

“What?” Kyle Brosterman looked at Erickson as if he’d lost his mind. “We’ve only just started out!” His hands gripped the wheel, his eyes focused on the rough terrain.

 

“I know. Something’s not right.”

 

Erickson, normally a man of few words, had been the base’s lead astronomer: sober and normally unexcitable. Brosterman, on the other hand, was a brash, impatient, hardheaded engineer. Not exactly the best of friends. The anxious astronomer had no idea why they should go back. It was just a feeling.

 

This was their fifteenth trip out to find the remaining supplies dump. Most of their electrical equipment had failed, so they were left to blindly search for the emergency fuel and food left by earlier missions.

 

“We’ve only got two months’ rations left!” snapped Brosterman.

 

“I know! It was me who told you.”

 

“We’re not going back. Keep your eyes peeled for the dump beacon.”

 

They had long stopped wondering why no one had come to check on them. For the last six months their only objective had been survival which meant finding lifesaving supplies they knew to be within a few miles of their base.

 

Four hours had passed, and the steady beep of the outpost’s radio mast in their helmet speakers meant they could safely return as long as they continued to pick up its repeating tone.

 

“Look! Did you see that?” Erickson pointed past a large, flat, rocky outcrop.

Brosterman said nothing but looked in the direction of Erickson’s outstretched arm.

 

“There it is again!”

 

This time, they both saw strange lights flickering in the distance.

 

“What the hell?” Brosterman brought the vehicle to an abrupt stop.

 

What appeared to be a veil of light shimmering like a glassy curtain gently moved as if in a breeze. They headed towards it in silence. Brosterman drove recklessly, making everything inside the caterpillar shake and rattle.

 

The glimmering, undulating expanse of prism-like light appeared to continue up into the black sky for as far as they could see, and equally to their east and west across the bleak barren surface.

 

“Don’t go any closer,” urged Erickson.

 

Brosterman said nothing. He started up the caterpillar and drove forward through the bright lights. The cabin lit up and shook from side to side for several seconds.

 

“Did you feel something?” Erickson put a hand to his right temple, forgetting he was wearing a helmet.

 

Brosterman looked pale. His eyes glazed over.

 

They sat, slumped in their seats, looking at the cabin floor for several minutes before slowly raising their heads and looking out of the caterpillar windscreen.

 

In front of them, for what looked like miles into the distance lay hundreds of identical caterpillars, all bearing the red stripe and the number three that emblazoned their own caterpillar’s exterior. Some were pushed over onto their sides; others were buried in the sand. Spacesuited bodies lay among a few of them.

 

Brosterman stared out in disbelief. “Are they… us? Are they copies?"

 

He looked at Erickson, who seemed to flicker on and off, disappearing and reappearing several times. The highly agitated engineer blinked rapidly, closed his eyes, and shook his head like he was losing control.

 

“Oh God.” Erickson, now apparently a solid entity once again, had noticed some words scratched into the ground. “They wrote something in the dust.”

 

Brosterman was trying to start up the caterpillar. It was dead. “What does it say?”

 

“Go back.”

 

“What? We’ve only just started!”

 

“Please go back.”

 

“We’re not going back.”

 

There was a long silence.

 

Erickson looked out of his window at the outpost, then in the opposite direction. He leaned over and hit the engine stop button. “I’m getting out.”

 

Brosterman let out an irritated sigh which was picked up by Erickson’s suit radio as he climbed out of the vehicle. He stood and watched it drive away, and for a reason he couldn’t understand, he stared in quiet horror at the red stripe and the number three on the side of the caterpillar.

 

Erickson turned and walked slowly back to the outpost wondering if he would ever see Brosterman again. In his mind, he was repeating the words go back to himself. He was now sure he remembered seeing that seemingly important phrase written somewhere in the dusty ground and that he was still alive because of it. His memory of the brash engineer, and the trips out in the caterpillar started to fade rapidly. In the coming minutes, he felt confused at the scattering memories which quickly became fragmented daydreams.

 

Tomorrow, he would try again on foot to find the food dump.

 

Inside the cramped cabin of the tenacious caterpillar, shouting to himself and to the dark, brutal world outside, Kyle Brosterman dragged the battered vehicle towards the curtain of light. Unwavering, transfixed by the shining sky, countless overlapping tracks lead him into the strange hell beyond.

Copyright 2024 - SFS Publishing LLC

Not This Time

And then there was one

Stephen Dougherty

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