Chap 5
At the crash site it's quiet. And then, a slight grinding noise fills the air as Myfanwy lies on the deck beside her storage container. A leg twitches. Then another. She gets delicately to her feet. She wriggles once as if she was stiff and cautiously makes her way outside.
She scans the area. Analyses. Turns and heads off into the landscape.
A landscape so huge, it's hard to grasp. Five tiny antlike figures progress across the wide expanse. They've already come a long ways. Beginning to fan out. Pause and regather. Ianto stops to catch his breath.
"How you doing?" Owen asks as he wanders past.
"Little tired. I'm okay." Ianto mutters.
"You should have put more treadmill time in." John declares imperiously.
"Go fuck yourself." Ianto mutters as he stumbles along.
"What'd you say?" John stops walking and swings to glare at Ianto.
"Ahhh...Musclehead, go fuck yourself?" Ianto repeats calmly.
"Guys..." Tosh warns, reaches out, checks their wrist monitors.
"We're doing fine." Owen tells her, "In point of fact, he's using less O2 than you are. We can stop a minute. Unless you two want to shout at each other and use up your air."
"Sorry." Ianto sighs.
"Fine. I'm sorry, too." John huffs.
No one's sorry. They rest. Use the moment to look around. It's pretty astounding. Doc uses the time to re-scan his abdomen. Puts the device away again. He's in pain but refuses to acknowledge it.
"How you doing?" Ianto asks, having noticed the covert scan.
"Things are as they are." Doc says in his usual cryptic way. "Lord. Look at it, we're on Mars. Pretty damn amazing."
"It' weird. There's nothing here." Tosh says softly.
"It's Mars." Owen scoffs, "What the hell do you want?"
"No, I mean there's not even a trace of the algae." She frowns and kneels down, examines a rock. Nothing.
"Even if it all died, there'd be something - a dried algal mat, traces on the lee sides, something." Owen looks around as he sees that she's right. Nothing. "She's right. We sent up fifty-two varietals. Blue-green, black, orange. Anhydriobiosics, chemotrauphs, even a thibacillus that could grow autotrophically on elemental sulphur. Not only are they dead, they're all just gone. I don't get it. It's like they were scoured off the rock."
"Maybe there was never anything in this valley." Ianto suggests.
"If we are where we think we are" Owen mutters as he checks his map that appears on a small screen, he mutters to it, overlays of all the algae and lichen that were on Mars appear. "You're right Tosh. This valley was covered with blue algae a month ago. Valley back one should have been covered in an orange-red plants. She's right. It's weird. There should be something."
They crest a small rise. Below lies a valley that closes down quickly into an extremely narrow canyon. Owen and John check their HHC maps.
"This, however, makes sense." Owen turns to John and shows him the readings.
"Debris apron. Delineated valley fill. Depositional fan..." John double-checks with Doc. Seems they're going the right way.
Doc leans back heavily against a boulder, "Good. You gotta keep moving..."
"And what're you gonna do, sit here and watch? You getting old and lazy?" Ianto scolds with open concern and he steps over to Doc to check him over.
"My spleen's ruptured. There's significant internal bleeding. I'm not going any further. And trying to carry me will slow you down just enough that we can all die." Doc says calmly as Owen starts to panic and tries to assess for himself.
"We'll get you to the Hab." Ianto looks back desperately in the direction they travelled from,"Lock out the spine impulse and you can walk one of us through it."
"No. You won't." Doc says sadly as he looks up at John.
John takes charge. It's his mission now, Jack said so. "We build a litter. We take him."
"Chain of command once we hit the surface starts with me." Doc growls angrily, "And I'm ordering you to go, Lieutenant. Now."
"I've only got about forty minutes." He speaks softly to Ianto who is in shock, "There's really not much pain. Put me around the corner where I've got a view."
"They lift him to the other side of the rock. Ianto lingers, stricken ad speechless.
"It's okay. I'm not sorry I came." Doc reaches for his hand.
Ianto takes one last look over his shoulder as they trudge away from their fallen crew member.
.
.
.
Torchwood, this Houston, do you read? Torchwood, this Houston, do you read?" Rhys shakes his head as they fail to connect.
"What do you want to do?" Gwen asks nervously and Yvonne sighs.
"Get every dish in the Deep Space Network pointed at Mars." Yvonne grimaces, "Declare a spacecraft emergency."
.
.
.
Doc has toppled over. Still, silent. Just the small plume of red dust that was unsettled by the impact of his body with the ground.
No time to mourn.