Chap 13
MOVING ACROSS the landscape. Miles and miles from where they started, they move rapidly across a dry wash, across the bank and up and over a hill. And stop dead at the top.
Over the next ridge, the landscape is covered with algae. Colours like oil paint, large brush strokes on the landscape. Oxblood brown, burnt orange, cadmium yellow.
"Wattya know." Ianto huffs with wonder.
Ianto gets down on one knee to examine it. Half inch to an inch high, vividly coloured. Healthy. "Maybe it's the longitude. Maybe it's the equatorial belt..."
"Maybe it doesn't matter 'cause we gotta keep moving or we're gonna die." Owen interrupts.
Ianto doesn't argue. Just trying to stay alive is the greater mission right now. They bound down far side..
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Borokovski is labouring to install Windows on a 50-year-old computer from the museum. Yvonne and Andy watch, mesmerised. It crashes. Again.
"Yob tyvou mot!" Borokovski explodes (Which, by the way, means "fuck your mother.")
"It keeps crashing." He snarls at them "That was part of its charm. You had to buy programs to check why the program you had already bought was not working."
"People installed this on their computers on purpose? It wasn't a virus?" Andy asks with confusion.
"The company planned it this way." Borokovski explains, "It was later discovered they owned all the companies that sold you the products to fix the product they had already sold you."
"I remember this. The government had to bomb the factory in the end." Gwen mutters.
Borokovski nods. Windows comes up. "Look, there we go."
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Jack watches the Mars landscape through the cameras, searching desperately.
As the picture skitters along the surface and finds them, tiny figures on a landscape. In extreme profile.
He marks their location on the vid-screen, zooms out wide. The Hab and the Cosmos are marked with symbols. The computer pauses, analyses, then spits them out as a little more than 56 kilometres along their way.
More calculation is done on the screen. They're more than halfway; they've used up less than half the available daylight; their average speed is looking good. They're on time, on schedule and on the right course. So far, so good.
"Ground crew, this is Torchwood." Jack flicks the coms, "You're a little more than half. You're doing great."
"Oh yeah, we're doing fabulous." Owen snarks and Jack smiles at the acidic man's voice.
As he plunges into darkness, he can hear Owen start to sing "Rollin', rollin', rollin', keep them doggies rollin'."
They're all exhausted and a little punchy as they plod along.
"How long can a man go without food or water?" Owen wonders aloud.
"How long can you go without singing that dumb song?" Tosh huffs and Owen looks hurt. Walks another few paces. Begins to sing again. Tosh turns to Ianto.
"There's two of us." She stage whispers "And we can stop him from singing."
Ianto considers. Then sings along instead. They only know the one line. It's really annoying.
"What is that?" Ianto finally asks and Owen stops to think.
"I have no idea." He starts to shuffle again, "It's old, though. It's classic music."
"I don't know the classics." Ianto admits.
This sets Owen off. He sings some more "Mars ain't a place to raise your kids, In fact it's cold as hell, And there's no one there to raise them, If you dig."
"What the hell is that?" Ianto laughs.
"You don't know any of the classics, do you? He was a rocket man." Owen crows.
"An astronaut wrote that?" Ianto cries with mirth as Tosh giggles as well.
"Never mind." Owen muters.
"Sing the one about the dogs again." Ianto prompts.
"It's about cows." Owen groans.
"Then why does it say doggies?" Ianto is really confused now and Tosh just shrugs too.
All this time, they've been walking across a landscape pigmented with colour - steel blue, crimson, bright green - the algae varietals everywhere. And then off to the left, the algae stops. Erased, like it was never there, halted in a long crooked line.
"What the fuck?" Ianto says softly.
"Yeah, what the fuck? You said doggies." Tosh demands.
Then she sees as well. They all see. Can't help themselves. They're drawn towards it. Owen and Tosh check their course in the distance before veering off. Ianto is already heading towards it.
It's maybe 100 yards away. At 50, something indistinct can be seen. Sort of. It's like the line, and the surrounding terrain is out of focus, blurry. At 30, the blurriness comes into focus. It's alive. It moves slightly. You can see through it. At ten, you can see it undulating. Erasing the algae, the colour slowly spreading outwards behind and diffusing. And then he can see a billion, a hundred billion...nematodes. Little tiny translucent worms. Eating the algae. Slowly, irrevocably. Advancing.
Ianto pulls out his entrenching tool. Carefully separates one out. Lifts it up to the light to see. Maybe three inches long, skinnier than an earthworm. One end lifts in the air, a tri-part mouth with little crystalline teeth opening and closing, searching for something to eat.
It's fucking scary. It gets worse when you realize how many of them there are. The line's moved three or four inches closer as they stand there. They take a step back. No one can really speak yet.
"What..." Ianto holds it out to Owen.
"It's a nematode. Or something like one. It's probably this skinny so it defrosts each morning when the sun hits them. Or they're not water-based at all." Owen says as he and Tosh examine it.
"Is it something we sent up by accident with the probes?" Ianto wonders.
"No." Tosh says confidently.
"I thought we said there wasn't any life on this planet." Ianto said still on his knees.
"We did. We were wrong. Maybe there wasn't when we checked. I don't know. It's not from Earth." Owen declares.
"And it's not from here." Tosh agrees.
"This can't be. This can't be." Owen actually seems kind of upset about it. Ianto looks at him. Say what? Owen is upset.
"It can't be here. You don't understand." Owen says as he looks over the undulating mass, "The odds of there being any other life in the universe are infinitesimally small. The odds that it could survive on something other than its home planet are equally astronomical. The odds that it could travel to another solar system, let alone one where life already existed are...impossible."
"But it's here." Tosh says quietly.
"Yeah." Owen seems almost unhappy about this. It rocks his world. In a bad way.
Tosh turns to Ianto happily and untroubled "Well, it looks like we're not alone in the universe. You just discovered life on another planet, pal."
It takes a moment for this to sink in. Then something hits Ianto. "Made by God. That's what's supposed to be stamped on the bottom. That's what Doc would have said. He woulda loved this."
Tosh gets down on one knee and looks at them. They're kinda horrible, but as she turns to Ianto, "You know what this means? You're gonna be more famous than Darwin. They're gonna name buildings after you. Space crafts, cities on Mars"
"Right. Right. Motherfuck. Motherfuck." Ianto says and then he says something really odd "Name them after Hart."
"You hated John."
"Yeah." He storms away. They're both confused by this. Ianto finds a rock, sits down behind it. He's obscured except for his head and shoulders. "I need a minute or two."
"You wanna tell Houston?" Tosh calls out.
"Go ahead. You do it. Just give me a few minutes." Ianto hopes they can't hear his tears in his voice.
"We seem to have come across the, uh, cause of the annihilation of the algae. There's cryptoendolithic life here. Eating it." Owen informs mission control.
"They're hallucinating." Rhys says sadly.
"Ianto's a bit overcome. Or he'd be telling you about it himself. But the discovery goes to him." Tosh joins the conversation, "Though he wants to name them after Hart."
They all look at each other, then Yvonne reaches for the mic, "You're saying there's Martian life."
"No, that there's life on Mars. We're not saying where it came from. But not Earth. Fuck." Ianto mutters, still overcome with confusion.
They all disregard that last bit.
"They're like some kind of translucent worms." Owen says and the scientists and Techs all scramble.
"You're all seeing these?" Yvonne asks.
"Oh yeah. They're here. What did you think this was, hypoxia?" Owen scoffs.
They did.
Conversation over, Owen closes the coms and shakes his head at Tosh.
Tosh walks towards the rock "We should get outta here."
Owen has wandered back to the bugs and is on his hands and knees, worshiping them.
"Owen, come on!" she calls out, Ianto turning to see why he is not responding.
"Jesus...Jesus God..." Owen starts to scream and Ianto runs over. Owen has been surrounded by the creatures and they surge up his suit.
Tosh has joined him. There's nothing they could do. Ianto holds Tosh back as she screams, watching in shock. As if some secret message the food is here has spread through the billions of them in burst of knowledge.
A diaphanous, hungry wave crests onto Owen and engulfs him. He's covered in translucence as they devour him. They stagger backwards in horror as a red aureole grows around him as he's eaten. Colour spreads out around him in a perfect ever-growing circle. It's a feast.