Lost on Olympus Mons

             “Why did I do this?” I wondered aloud. Of course, I already knew the answer. I wanted to be appreciated. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to be treated as an equal! At that moment, all I wanted was to survive.

             I took a quick look over the edge of the park bench-sized ledge on which I found myself. The view made me feel faint. I returned my helmeted head to it’s resting place against the rock and resumed chipping away at the wall to my left. My small utility knife would be useless soon, but it gave me something to focus on.

             I never would have found myself in this position if it weren’t for Kim Connor. Connor had been working in the Tharsis region of Mars longer than anyone else employed by NASA. He acted as though he owned the entire planet, but it was to be expected. Connor was a volcanologist, tephrochronologist, and an expert on Martian topography. In short, he was the best man to lead a reconnaissance expedition in the Tharsis Bulge.

             I had been excited to explore Olympus Mons, the highest mountain and volcano in the Solar System. Being a lowly geologist, my opinion did not matter to one so highly educated as Kim Connor. We had spent six weeks going over some of the other volcanoes in the Bulge. I felt as though we had gone over Pavonis Mons grain by grain, yet there was no end in sight. Doctor Connor refused to move on to Olympus Mons, insisting that we needed to survey the other enormous volcanoes in the area before tackling a job as big as Olympus.

             One morning as I leaned over a small pile of stones collected from the eastern side of Pavonis, I caught the end of a heated conversation. My comm crackled for a moment as the men came into range. I could make out one of the voices as no other than Kim Connor. The other, though muffled, sounded like one of the newly acquired technicians whose names I had forgotten. It seemed that the technician shared my opinion; he wanted to go to Olympus Mons.

             You’re wasting your breath, kid. I bent back over the specimens I had been working on, but my thoughts stayed on the young technician. That was when I came up with the worst idea of my short life.

             Later that day, I went to find the technicians and inquired about the man I heard arguing with Connor. The voice had belonged to a young sandy-haired man named Jake, who turned out to be every bit as anxious to reach Olympus as I was. Changing our comm settings to lock onto each other’s signal, we had a brief private conversation in which I illuminated my brilliant scheme. Jake was eager and willing to try. We decided to meet at 02:00 the next morning at The Pits located very near where my rock samples were collected. The Pits was the recon team’s nickname for the line of eye-shaped pits that flanked the eastern side of Pavonis.

             When I reached our rendezvous point at 01:00, Jake was waiting for me. We set out, circling the base of Pavonis to the Northwest where Olympus Mons waited patiently for us. As time passed, I began regretting my decision to meet on the Eastern flank, but it was the least conspicuous course we could have chosen.

             I got to know Jake very little during the trip, each of us in our own crawlers. This was just as well in the long run. You can’t mourn long for someone you never really knew.

             After many hours inside my crawler, we finally made it to our destination. Olympus Mons was directly ahead, and I allowed myself a moment of premature but joyous whooping. Jake and I had a steep cliff to scale before we could reach whatever treasures lay in wait on Olympus.

             Jake reached the cliff before I did. I thought at the time that he was incredibly fast but in retrospect, not fast enough. When I pulled up we unloaded our weighting gear and set to work, climbing as quickly as we could. Jake made better time than I did. He was nearly 20 feet above me when our comms stopped working. Finding it impossible to communicate while using our arms and legs to cling to the rock, we climbed in silence.

             I saw the falling stone before Jake did. He tried to swing himself out of the way, but the medicine ball-sized chunk of the Martian landscape hurtled toward him too quickly. Before I could even gasp, the stone had dropped out of sight taking Jake with it.

             Though in shock, I had the good sense to continue climbing before my strength was depleted. If my sense was really good, I would have climbed down.

             I had made it past the halfway mark when my foot slipped. I tried to find another foothold, but the fingers of my left hand were losing their grip. I managed a single scream as I plummeted toward the alien ground below.

             My next recollection was that of excruciating pain emanating from my right ankle. This was followed almost immediately by the exhilarating importance of such pain. I was alive! When I opened my eyes, the invigoration dissipated as rapidly as it had come. I found myself stuck on a ledge just big enough to hold my small frame, and my ankle was bent at an unnatural angle. I weighed my options, which were few, before I pulled out my utility blade. I began chopping the rock beside me, giving the wall’s surface a tiny nick with each sweep of my arm. I would make sure that everyone knew I hadn’t lost my sense of humor.

             Damn you, Kim Connor! I twisted my shoulders just enough to lie flat on my back, and surveyed my work before closing my eyes one last time.

             KY WAS HERE.









Word Count:  997